Kef Blades

[audiobill]

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[AnotherJohnson]

Looking forward to your thoughts.

KEF were prominent in the UK when Linn were starting out. You’d often see Linn, NAIM, and KEF based systems.

[admin]

Looks great. I had the opportunity to audition some KEF speakers a number of years ago. They were solid performers and have such a distinctive look. Maggies of course look great!

[Big Dog RJ]

Kef Blades nice one! Congrats mate.

That will be quite different to Maggie's and will probably fill in certain frequencies that the Maggie's tend to miss. Due to the pure ribbon tweeters operating on another stratosphere and the rest of the panel on another platform, certain frequencies are missed out. I only noticed this once I compared other speakers side by side directly with Maggie's wired to the same system. Of course things improved with every MG series but there Waa still a miss.

The Kef's will fill in this detail nicely. BTW, very nice collection of McIntosh! Looks like another passionate fan on Mac, both tube and SS gear.
Which Maggie's are those? MG20 series...?

Cheers, RJ

[audiobill]

Thanks! Typed out a response, then lost it!

Summary -

Looked at upgrade from my Maggie 3.6/r to 20.7

Also considered :
-Legacy Aeris
-KEF Blade One
-Wilson Sasha/DAW
-Focal Sopra3
-YG Hailey 1.2
-Revel Ultima Salon2
-Perlisten S7T

After considering performance, engineering, build quality, aesthetics, availability and price, I found a preowned pair of KEF Blade Ones in excellent condition in Toronto (six hour drive from Albany, NY) and did the deed.

The Blades have great bass, dynamics, pinpoint imaging and a very wide soundstage. Very natural , holographic sound.

As you say, a great complement to the Maggies, very happy!

[Big Dog RJ]

Ah, that's a wise move mate.
Already having MG3.6 and going towards MG20.7's is not a massive upgrade. What happens is the 20.7's offer bigger dynamics, greater scale / realism and most of all lower bass, due to large panels. Then as you go onto the 30.7's, all of that delivered on the 20.7's goes up a few notches, that's about all.

However, I will say this though, if you were to mod your MG3.6 with greater bracing, a more rigid structure on the whole frame plus grounding, and upgrade the crossovers, including the jumper cables, you'll achieve an extraordinary performance!

Admin has done these mods on his MG20's and uses CJ's ART monoblocks, so this will not be your typical ordinary Maggie's. These mods can elevate the performance by a significant margin, it's not even funny.

I've heard some Maggie's where the owners went into such great lengths of highend mods, arriving at a total cost greater than the original price of the speakers itself! Some of these included; aluminium frames, total bracing at the back with heavy duty spikes for grounding, also adds more weight to the entire structure and is anchored solid! On crossovers every component was changed to either Mundorf caps or Duelands, pure silver wires, gold plated terminals and even the plates on the Maggie's were top grade. Overall sound wise, a completely different level! However, those mods cost a pretty penny but I guess these owners are truly passionate about their Maggie's.

Enjoy those finer tunes on the KEF's!
Cheers, RJ

[admin]

I'm right on with RJ.

Going up the ladder on the Maggie line does offer improvement, but the price jumps in the last 2-3 tiers is very large for the modest incremental benefits (IMHO). I think you can do a lot on the lower models to significantly improve the sound and it won't cost an arm and a leg.

The two biggest upgrades in my opinion are:

1) Better bracing. The feet on Maggies are really kind of a joke in my opinion. It's done simply for practicality. I would start with getting much better bracing. Something heavy as well as one that has a higher attachment point so the tall speaker is not pivoting all the way at the bottom.

2) The crossover. It's not a complicated crossover and simply swapping the caps for some higher end ones will significantly improve the sound.

Both offer considerable improvements at minimal cost (compared to jumping up to the 20.7's or 30.7's).

Didn't want to go off track as this is a Kef topic. One nice thing about the Kef's is that you don't have to worry about these kinds of mods. It's a very solid speaker right out of the box.

[audiobill]

I wanted to share a learning that seems obvious, but like many things...

From my picture above, you can see I had my Maggies flanking my new-to-me Kef Blade One speakers.

The Blades each have four 9" SIDE-FIRING woofers. With the Maggies placed on the flanks, a "box" was formed by the front wall, side wall and Maggie that the Blade was firing into. This "box" had the effect of really boosting the Blade mid-bass, which was cured by removing the Maggies from their location.

With the side-firing woofers, the Blades want to be placed at least 36" from the side walls, but can be placed within 18" of the front wall. Totally opposite placement considerations from Maggies. And, with their super wide dispersion mid/treble drivers, the soundstage is very wide, rather unlike the Maggies, which image best primarily in the MLP.

An REW scan shows extended response below 30 hz in my room. The Blades are certainly keepers!

[AnotherJohnson]

Ivor Tiefenbrun insisted that all speakers in the same room interact with each other, and hence it is impossible to evaluate any single pair while all are present.

He required his dealers to remove other speakers for demos. A true Linn dealer would honor this request and have a dedicated space where speakers would be brought in only one pair at a time.