5275 Prospect Road

San Jose, California 95129

Telephone (408) 255-0576

July 20, 2004

If you are reading this you presumably already own some model of Magnepan and appreciate the "family" sound that characterizes the entire line. It is difficult to add anything constructive to the many glowing testimonials that Grant already has for his stands but I will try.

My first pair of Magnepans were the six panel Tympani I-As that I bought new in 1973 leading to Tympani I-Ds, I-Ds with Decca ribbon tweeters, Tympani IVs and IVs with separately driven Genesis 12M subs. Along the way many of my friends bought single panel versions. Ultimately, without ever hearing them I bought MG-20s in an attempt to get away from the subs. It didn’t work. Since that failed I always thought my room was too small to support the supposed lower limit of 25 Hz that the 20s are rated at (or the 30 Hz that the IVs were rated at).

Over these 31 years I have always true bi-amped the speakers and eliminated the external Magnepan crossovers. I have been through MANY components both tube and SS and countless cables and power conditioning schemes (PS Audio beta tester for both the P300 and PCA-1, current system available on their site). Once I ordered Grant’s stands I decided to simplify things and went to a full range set-up with no subs. I lived with that for about a month.

Installation with some help from my wife was a snap. Grant’s stands made the single largest top to bottom improvement I have ever experienced while retaining everything that is wonderful about the speakers.

They will indeed effectively increase the efficiency of the speakers by improving the energy transfer of the diaphragm into the air instead of the frame with an associated increase in microdynamics and imaging stability. Using the Stereophile test sweeps and the Radio Shack SPL digital meter, the speakers now measure –3 dB at 25 Hz where before they measured –4 dB at 40 Hz. The bass power and definition is now SO good that you probably won’t realize anything is still missing unless you have had something as fast and deep as the Genesis subs. Re-integrating them has become a problem though and I am generally leaving them off.

The real question here is why Magnepan doesn’t provide these as a stock item as they solve virtually every criticism I have ever read about them. Now if they could just be 100 dB efficient…

Highest recommendation!!