My sons comments ranged from "Dad, do you know what the heck you are doing?" to "I can help you carry these to the trash bin now if you wish" (that was right in the middle of the project, when all the wires were stripped from the mylar and were threatening to get tangled up into a knot, what with all the glue on them) to "Are you getting high from the smell of acetone? is it safe? should we move to the garage?".
Seriously I did not expect them to work well because of a large tear we found on one that was caused by blunt force impact by a pointy weapon of some sort by the previous owner. The tear was large and we struggled to find a way to keep the mylar stretched while applying a patch to the whole (you really need a custom made jig to do that well - or ship them to Magnepan). The force of the impact was high enough to fracture the MDF frame, which we reinforced with a sandwich of metal pates and screws courtesy of Ace hardware). But I could no give up on them - I told my son "we are finishing this come hell or high water - perfect or not" - and he laughed and kept at it.
The sound afterwards was Maggie smooth and with incredible imaging typical of Maggies - but they lost high end response in the process, I did notice that (and the old MG1Cs were weak in that area to begin with - as you probably know). The process of applying contact cement glue properly is an acquired skill - I am sure I used too much - which added unnecessary weight and dampened response (but m thinking was - "after removing all those damn staples I am not going to do this twice!"). I also did not take enough time to clean the old glue with acetone - my patience ran out and depression set in when I discovered the large tear. I am sure that if you take the time to do it right and slowly (as opposed to me - I did this over two days) you would get better results. The design of the transducers is very forgiving repairs wise (a surprise to me).
My son could not believe the things worked, let alone worked well enough to listen for a long time.
I hope this gives some insight to anyone here contemplating Maggie repairs in the future.
