Fixing Magnepan wires

[Rick Vansloneker]

It's good to see people share the love for planar speakers as shown in this forum. I never was truly impressed with conventional speakers and since the first time I heared planar speakers (Audiostatic ES200) knew this was it. A short liason with the Stax Lamda Nova was followed with the purchase of a pair of Magnepan SMG-a in 1999.

Over the years some resonating became more and more apparent. When a very irritating high tone resonance showed up I decided to work on the lifting wires. Both left and right speakers had wires lifting on top and bottom. Also small streches of high tone wire had come loose on the right speaker.

Following guides I did read on the Planar Speaker Asylum I glued the wires with 3M #77 spray-on adhesive -filthy expensive in my country btw. The left speaker so far is fine. The right isn't.

It seems the original glue has lost all it's glueing power. Particularly after playing music with raised volume more and more streches of wire came -and still come- loose. Both low and high tone wire. I had to flick so many streches of high tone it decided to redo them completely. With acetone I got them off and cleaned the mylar. The bottom 10-15cm I left untouched, it was still holding them down ok and from that point I could more easily guide them back in position again. Very careful I lifted them up. If I'd break a wire I would not know how to get replacement. Then sprayed them while having the mylar covered to prevent overspray and bit by bit put them back on.

Because of the minimized mass the sound quality had leaped forward. But not for long. The wires are so thin apparently not enough glue was holding them down and bit by bit high tone wire came loose again. I had to flick and flick and flick. Since also the low frequency wire ends are beginning to lift up again I have my doubts with the quality of this 3M #77. Even when I put redundant glue under the wire ends they start to lift afer a while.


For the high tone wires spraying glue on the mylar using a template may help, for the low frequency wires I would not know how to do better. So I am at the point where I believe this glue is not going to give me a more or less acceptable result.

I hope some of you have some know how and maybe know of better glue.

[Florian]

Hit me up on PM with your phone number, i repaird Maggies before

[squeegy200]

This is likely the best article I've seen on the wire repairs.

http://www.integracoustics.com/MUG/M...nn/repair.html

[Rick Vansloneker]

Thanks squeegy200, a very interesting article indeed. I followed it back to the audio-asylum and it had a lot of replies worth reading also.