My black FR20s arrived this morning, WITHOUT

That’s a tough ask to find anyone who has heard both! Very hard to hear either one out in the wild, much less to compare them!

But maybe someone has……

Wendell toured a set (can’t call them a pair) of the 30.7 to many Magnepan dealers around the country a few years ago, something that I missed and would love to have experienced.

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As everyone should know PS Audio should have both playing in separate rooms. For our Canadian friends (and those Americans close to the Greater Toronto area) I think Parts Connexion should have both. I’ve never been to their “store” but they advertised they had the FR30 playing a while back and recent ads say the FR20 is now playing.

A friend of mine and I were able to catch the Wendell 30.7 road show when it was here in Indianapolis, back in 2019. They were supremely nice, though when I complimented Wendell on their ability to realistically convey the texture of Brubeck’s piano in “Take 5,” he said, “Texture? I don’t know what that means.”

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Ouch…

Someone who’s been in the industry for 50 years should know a term like that.

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Caught them in Madison on the same tour. Odd thing though as the dealer walked away from the brand mid-Covid. No clear explanation. My guess is the local demand wasn’t there.

The '20s are now pointing straight back to reduce treble a bit and with grills on… Distance-measured again… I LIKE IT; the soundstage is wider and deeper, and the tonality seems to be a bit warmer (which I like)…! Listening to multichannel music with FOUR channels sounds a little…lacking…in the center (haven’t yet listened in stereo), which is solved by activating the centerchannel speaker with its level set to many dB below flat.

The new/old Vandersteen VCC-1…


…my third copy, sounds very good; I define it as Large for music and Small for movies–which almost always dump TOO MUCH junk into the CC.

The Allnic amps are on their pads but will soon be shipped to Sonic Craft for rebuilding.

I’m REALLY encouraged with these minor tweaks; these are KEEPERS! I might even start thinking about which vibration-reducing feet I’ll use for them… Burn-in hours are this afternoon at about 115 hours.

Also will build an ampstand–of the same 3cm granite as the amppads–to replace the Pangea Vulcan stand that’s borrowed.


Also, I thank Chris Brunhaver for his enthusiatic help with everything.

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More progress.

Burn-in hours are now about 200 and that’s one improvement… Recent changes include tweaking the speakers’ positions slightly toward the center and adding Herbies Tall Tenderfoots as isolation feet; there’s a single Tall Tenderfoot…

…under each of the 4 screw-in threaded holes in the bottom plate… I gave up considering anything more expensive.

The aural results include greater resolution, resulting in sound close to or about the same as the best ever in my system, particularly substantial reduction in the steelyness/hardness in the sounds of massed violins(1), and larger-overall soundstage with more-solid center.

Have considered upgrading the MR/treble crossover caps and resistors in series with those signals(2) and probably will do something… Am also in the process of building a simple center-amp-and CC-speaker stand of the same 3cm granite as my amppads.

I know I gush, but these speakers systems are evolving into the GREAT category, and I’m THRILLED with the sounds my system makes with them.

(1) Do recall that in my HDMI-cable-fed system, the Marantz '8805 is doing the decoding of musical signals, and I’m finding that while the resulting quality isn’t bad, it’s certainly not great, either… I had considered a new PSA PWDS DAC-II-based SACD system but haven’t gotten there yet.

(2) There are one-each cap and resistor in series with the treble plus a shunt cap. For the MR, there are 2 large caps and 1 resistor in series plus 1 shunt cap… To be clear, these are the devices I’ll replace, not a count of those type of caps and resistors in those sections.

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Just curious, have you ever tried running the FR20’s off of your Emotiva amp? If not, would you be willing to just to see how it fairs on such good loudspeakers?

You may or may not know, but I run the older XPA-2 Gen 2 on my Maggie 1.7i’s, and honestly, the more the system improves downstream from the amp, and the room improves, I find it harder and harder to shop for a better amp.

At any rate, you have a beautiful system there! Also love those HHR Exotics’.

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TY for your nice comments.

No, I’ve not tried driving any main speakers with the Emotiva, since is has only one 300-Watt module…plus 5 stereo modules of 65WPC… And the main ICs won’t reach it… The high-power module certainly sounds good on any CC speaker I’ve ever had.

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That is a chocolate from a Dairy Milk Selection, and don’t tell me otherwise :slight_smile:

Yaa, a BLACK chocolate!

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Day 14–new feet, 150 hours more burn-in, new position.

Burn-in hours now up to about 340… I removed the carper sliders and bought a box of 4 SVS subwoofer feet… I liked them so much, I ordered another 4-box, arriving today… The front feet shown…


…are screwed on solidly but are not adjustable… I’ll buy some M8-1.25* screws, nuts, and washers and assemble them so that they screw up and down so that I can always get the speakers level in both axes… The rear feet shown are Herbies Tenderfoots, stacked, but I’d like the speakers to be easier to move.

That’s my old Martin Logan centerchannel speaker that ran I was VERY pleased with for a couple years but started ‘popping’ quietly last year… I removed it and finally I wrote ML to see if they would repair it; the answer was ‘no’, but the tech gave me some vacuuming instructions, which worked, and it’s back in and making beautiful music… As far as I can recall, this is the only CC speaker I was never tempted to replace.

These new FR20 positions are competely outside the screen, and…duh!..the soundstage is wider, overall… However, the center half is not as cleanly defined, so I (again) run the CC speaker to help fill that… The system sounds better and better, and I’m still THRILLED with these.

  • The size and pitch of the 4 holes in each of the bases.

Edit–corrected the screw pitch.

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Well, that’s a nice outcome…

Enjoy.

Received the second 4 SVS footers, bought about $20 of M8-1.25 screws and nuts, and installed all 8 this afternoon… All 4 footers are adjustable for height. Total cost was around $120.

Can’t say that I could hear a difference, but the tall boxes are more stable now AND easier to move.

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Nice work.

I wonder how they would sound with Townshend Podiums.

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Now you’re talking.

Does toe in fix your centre fill problem?

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Maybe some type of decorative nut cap would be a better look… :+1: