First Logan experience

RUR said:

Can't remember what put the bee in my bonnet, but I went to Christopher Hansen's in 1989 specifically to listen to some Logans, and walked out with a pair of Sequels. A few days later, my dad (whom I blame for my hi-fi curse) came by my place and almost immediately started to tell me about these amazing new speakers he'd heard. It quickly became obvious that he was describing ML's, so I glanced over at the Sequels, which he hadn't seen(!), and asked if he meant "those".

His jaw hit the floor.

It's been all downhill from there.

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Haha!! What a cool story. I hope I can have the same impact on my kids. It is both a curse AND a blessing.

Sacramento CA (1985 or 89 I believe), walked into Kieth Yates Audio and was first struck how cool and unusal these speakers they were hooking up look. The were Sequel's. Then they started putting on some reference material and I simply could not beleive what I was hearing and seeing. It was truely love at first sight and sound.

I lusted after ML's for nearly 10 years until one day I walked into Hawthorne Stereo in Seattle and there was a pair of Sequel II hooked up to a Mac 205 and vintage Mc Pre amp. I did not negociate, I did not hesitate. I put down the minimum 10% by check which I could not cover at the time which held everything for 30 days. I sold almost everything dear to me but my family and on the 29th day, and what seemed like 23ed hour, came in with the money to take them home. I have never looked back and those Sequel's and that Mac are still in full use today. I simply can't express how much joy that those speaker have brought to me over the years.

I added a theatre center and built my Media Room around that set up and the speakers are still enjoyed by many today. I also added a pair of Monolith's a few years back as well as a couple more Mac's and now have a dedicated 2 channel set up in my basement office (Man Cave) and with the help of the formum (especially our resident Monolith God JohnFo and his DriveRack) have that set up dialed in and I am enjoying it immensely.

It's all old school for me at present but I love Marting Logan's. The good people at Magnolia Hi Fi also understand my passion of course but with the sensitivity of a crack dealer keep giving me a "taste" of all things new. Stay tuned as I am sure the saga will have more ML chaperters to come.

Well, lesse, my Mom called me one day about 7 years ago (she's a realtor). "Craig, I bought some speakers for you at an estate sale". "They're B&W's". I raced to her house with visions of 802's or similar in my head, squat, dynamic, floorstanders....she pulls up with a pair of Sequels wrapped in blankets sticking out of the trunk of her partners Lincoln Town Car, all I knew was they were ML's and I had to :bowdown:

We pulled them out and I looked around for a source, I'd not thought of this in my haste to grab my prize, Doh! All she had was a little Sony receiver with probably 30w a side @8ohms, well it was fun while it lasted....about 2 minutes, poor little Sony cried uncle. While they played, k.d. lang was in the house, Mom almost said she wanted to keep them, thank God most women don't like big speakers in their living rooms! I was a good son, thanked her for the gift, called my bud with his '71 VW Bus..."Come get me, I have Logan's" :yell: We wisked them off to my abode for a hookup with a SAE A201amp, P101 pre, Thorens/SME/Grado Silver combo, goodness what a jaw dropper. We both were flabergasted, MFSL Lps of Alan Parsons, Pink Floyd, Supertramp were played end on end.

I never turned back, still have those circa '89 Sequels, I could do better, but, I'm poor, they are true to the original design thought, the crossovers and trannies are a work of art, Jim Power worked the line back then, I'm proud of my old Sequels, they make people dance in the room while they play, I think that says alot

Might as well make this my first post here. Back around 98 or 99 when I was really just setting up my first home theater system I happened to walk into a small audio store that was setting up a demo with two large ML's and a pair of Paradigm Servo 15's running of separates (can't recall what they were). Anyway it was during their boxing day sale and I'd come in looking for a decent budget CD player and found a good deal on a Marantz 5 disc changer so i was pretty happy about that but then they asked if I wanted to listen to the demo they'd now finished setting up... well as soon as Dark Side of the Moon fired up on that system I was hooked and ever since it has defined the benchmark of what I expect a system to sound like. Over the years since then I've owned some pretty good speakers and some systems actually came close to rivaling that epic benchmark...but tonight I should finally complete the journey when I take ownership of my first set of ML's (Aerius with upgraded panels). I feel like a kid on Christmas eve today...counting down the hours...

:rocker:

btw, do you sometimes get called The Stig?

btw, do you sometimes get called The Stig?

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I'm a bit of a Top Gear addict

This thread rocks. It's really what music is all about. Finding something that really moves you. I'm sitting here listening to my Vantages and just can't get over how good they sound, even after three plus years. Everybody has their own taste, and me, I've found mine. They are singing for me now.

Bring on some more stories. I've surely had fun reading them all.

Early 1987 on a vacation in Denver. My girlfriend was shoe shopping and I spied a hifi store, so I went over and heard CLS's with Mark Levinson ML-2's (which I used to own years ago) and an Oracle turntable.

As soon as I got home to Phoenix I bought a pair...

But the affection for panels started about 8 years earlier with Magnepans. (then Acoustats, Quads, more Magnepans and Acoustat 2+2's)

It has been a crazy journey.

2008:

Phase 1: Buy 1st home theater setup. Budget=$200
Phase 2: Reality sets in. Most HTIB with good reviews $500-$800
Phase 3: Liked bose lifestyle system after listening to demo.
Save money for bose. Price=$2000+
Phase 4: Not sure if bose was worth the $2000+

2009:

Phase 5: W/wife, saw ML preface price tag and thought, who the heck was
stupid enough to buy these damn speakers?
Phase 6: Listened to preface vs vienna acoustics vs def tech vs etc. We
were the stupid ones who bought the speakers.
Phase 7: Bought receiver, surround, bass, etc along w/ preface.
Price= $3000+
Phase 8: Delight of hearing stuff never heard before on familiar music and
movies.
Phase 9: Hope not to demo higher end ML's
Phase 10: Most likely to fail phase 9

^Don't worry, it's just a phase

For three months in '95, I was working in Detroit. One weekend, I found some audio stores grouped a few miles north of Detroit. When I walked into one of them (Almas), there were some reQuest's playing some beautiful sounding music. They were using a transistor amp for the subs and a tube amp for the panels. I thought it was the best sounding system I had ever heard. In another room, they had some Aerius' playing. They also sounded great. The salesman said these would sound great in a smaller room, so I bought them. Over the years, as I've added better gear and room treatments, the speakers have always risen to the task of producing better sound. For the size of the room I have them in, I'm not sure there are many speakers which I would prefer.

If jehovah god was into hi fi. He would own a pair of matin logan speakers as the are amazing i have the areuis i figs and custard they are amazing for the size :rofl:

jojomtn said:

2008:

2009:

Phase 5: W/wife, saw ML preface price tag and thought, who the heck was
stupid enough to buy these damn speakers?
Phase 6: Listened to preface vs vienna acoustics vs def tech vs etc. We
were the stupid ones who bought the speakers.
Phase 7: Bought receiver, surround, bass, etc along w/ preface.
Price= $3000+

Phase 9: Hope not to demo higher end ML's

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Good luck with Phase 9. Just a warning: Phase 7 is a price for a single set of good cables. But then life is short, isn't it?

Phase 10 will definitely come. In the meantime, I'll concentrate more on inexpensive room treatments. Im pretty happy with my blue jeans 12 white. $3000 worth of cable just doesnt sound right to me. Not to bring back the debate of "if cable matters or not". Its just not my cup of tea.

jojomtn said:

2008:

Phase 1: Buy 1st home theater setup. Budget=$200
Phase 2: Reality sets in. Most HTIB with good reviews $500-$800
Phase 3: Liked bose lifestyle system after listening to demo.
Save money for bose. Price=$2000+
Phase 4: Not sure if bose was worth the $2000+

2009:

Phase 5: W/wife, saw ML preface price tag and thought, who the heck was
stupid enough to buy these damn speakers?
Phase 6: Listened to preface vs vienna acoustics vs def tech vs etc. We
were the stupid ones who bought the speakers.
Phase 7: Bought receiver, surround, bass, etc along w/ preface.
Price= $3000+
Phase 8: Delight of hearing stuff never heard before on familiar music and
movies.
Phase 9: Hope not to demo higher end ML's
Phase 10: Most likely to fail phase 9

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Great story. I've not had as many phases (I don't think) but I think I'll be failing (or going through) another phase reletively soon. Kinda fun to fail in this way isn't it!

jojomtn said:

Phase 10 will definitely come. In the meantime, I'll concentrate more on inexpensive room treatments. Im pretty happy with my blue jeans 12 white. $3000 worth of cable just doesnt sound right to me. Not to bring back the debate of "if cable matters or not". Its just not my cup of tea.

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I recently moved to all Blue Jeans interconnects and am very pleased. I also like the fact you can custom order specfic lengths and get rid of the mess of extra wire. I'm soon to have a shoot out with my Harmonic Tech Pro Silway MKIII interconnect. If it looses, it goes and the savings account grows! I may also give Blue Jeans speaker cables a try too. Price is right and the product seems quite good. To me, its about sound, not price. And obviously, the cost of said sound.

For me, it all started on that rainy summers night ten years ago...yeah ok. It was probably partly cloudy with a chance of great San Francisco weather. I was 15 and my dad had just driven an hour to future sound to pick up a pair of Nautilus 802's.

At the time I couldn't understand for the life of me how anyone could sit through an hour of listening to the same songs over and over again. I chuckled to myself thinking "the crazy old man can't tell that all of these speakers sound the same! $8000 for these??? Imagine how many playstation games I could buy with those!" Obviously I was not enlightened to the ways of hi fi at the time. Anyway, we go to pick up the speakers, and these jet black transparent towers are sitting near the entrance, completely dominating the room. I remember gawking at how ridiculously awesome they looked. Where the hell did the drivers go??? I asked my dad why he didn't get those, and he told me that "they were jazz speakers". Bummer, I thought.

6 years later I'm in college and just bought a pair of used B&W 601's. Those were awesome speakers, but I wanted to see what the really hi fi stuff sounded like. Went to the local shop where the guy had Ascents?(I think they were ascents) hooked up. Played time from Dark Side. Then he played some tracks from the Wall. I just sat there wondering how my old man could say these were just for jazz. Unbelievable clarity, the sounds were coming from mid-air! It was magic, but unfortunately couldn't dish out the 4k he wanted!

2 weeks ago I bought my first pair of ML's. Jan. 1995 SL3's from A'gon without auditioning them. For about an hour after I first turned plugged them in, I couldn't bring myself to get out of my chair. Amazingly I think they impress me more than the ascents I heard. Maybe it was my experience as a kid, but there's just about Martin Logans that makes them instantly lovable.
The one speaker I might upgrade to in the future? Cls IIz's, but that's after I get a much bigger room. For now, it's pure sonic bliss every time I hit that power button on the amp:rocker:

For me, it was 1999. I was running an early Harman/Kardon AVR and went from Mission bookshelf to towers. I hated the towers and was casually looking around although I could not afford anything else. I was really a newbie as I really didn't understand what an AVR was at the time so I just used it in 2 channel mode.

I had an invite to a Toronto dealers' Wine & Cheese evening, so I went. The were demoing a Scenario / Stage(?) / Script (unsure of the subwoofer) AV system with a new fangled plasma display. Did I not just fall in love with the entire system! Both the A/V and 2 channel sound absolutely blew me way. I was mesmerized.

A year later, after settling down after a separation, I went back and they were selling off the demo Scenario's. After two or three listening sessions with Levison and then H/K (to more closely match my system). I took them home for a great price.

Four years later, I went to the Clarity's and will probably go Vista next year.
No looking back now. I'm hooked!