electrostats vs ribbon drivers

just to give you a bit of correct history. The only patent issue Magnepan had with Apogee Acoustics was with regard to the Apogee DIVA ribbon tweeter. This was circumvented by backdating the serial numbers on the DIVAs. Apogee did not go out of Business because of Magnepan. I have/had contacts to the inner circles of ex-apogee and the story was the high competition and demand for more commercial speaker systems. The downfall came with the Apogee GRAND. The engineering and production cost were to high and the numbers sold too low. Had nothing to do with Magnepan. The models that Magnepan has/had only employ in some cases an actual ribbon. Just for history purposes i have/had several models from both companies Apogee (Caliper Sig, Scintilla, Stage, DIVA and The Grand) as well as Magnepan 0.5, 1.6 and two pairs of 3.6s.

Cheers

Hi Florianw, I got this patent story from some of the 4
Magazines for which I had subscription then (30 years ago?). Whatever the cause of the downfall we all regret the fact that Apogee is out of buseness. I can't remember The
Grand however. Would you care to tell us something about? I
myself am not able to imagine something better than Scintilla. BTW I am not sure what you mean with 'Just for history purposes...' I would like to have Scintilla for
one purpose only : listening .

Regards,

Hello Nandric,

sure, i can give you a bit of an overview: The first model was called the "Fullrange" which is until today the largest model they made which employes only ribbons (or planar magnetic bass / people agree to disagree on this point). The Scintilla came second and was a bit of a Fullrange cut in half but with a unique midrange tweeter system that sat in the same slot. With one large pure aluminum ribbon in the middle and 4 ribbon tweeters around it. Later came other models such as the Caliper and the Duetta (smaller 2 way systems) followed up the new replacement 3 way Apogee DIVA (never reached the Fullrange) in sound tough. Although i only allow myself this remark with respect to other Apogees. Later came some hybrid models and the smallest Apogee called the "Stage". The hybrids such as the Mini Grand and the Studio Grand where hybrids where the bass panel stopped at around 70Hz and a subwoofer was employed. These are generally very good and capable of higher dynamic swings and could be used on lesser powered amps. In the early ninethees Apogee developed a speaker called "The Grand" which is a 4 way fully active ribbon speaker. Tweeter ribbon, midrange ribbon, woofer panel and basically a Krell Master Reference Subwoofer below it. Its about a 1300lbs without the packaging and comes with 4 built in krell mono amps for the subwoofer and (user selectable) woofer or tweeter. The customer has to apply additionally 4 channels of amplification so the system uses a total of 8 mono blocks to fire the speakers. Comes with built in displays and computer systems to adjust the rake, user presets, phase etc.... of all the drivers individually. About 7 pair or so were ever made costing over 85000$ in the early nineties. Extremely rare and to my ears the absolute pinnacle of sound. I had a Scintilla before and have friends who have them. An extremely good speaker and less space consuming then the Fullrange or Grand. Graz in Australia makes the spare parts in very high quality and excellent customer service. He even make a new Scintilla which can be driven by tube amps. :-)

@Nandric: The Australian you are referring to is Graz, see http://www.apogeeacoustics.com - there are dealers around the world you rebuild Apogees with Graz's drivers, so the Apogee marquee lives on very well. There are various postings around the web with pictures of such restorations, and they are really beautiful. A Diva can be had in the US for around $14K

Dear Florianw, First of all I think that you should supstitute 'historical reason' for 'love and empathy'.
In the second place I very much enjoy your story and explanation of all the models made. There are btw more examples of brilliant designers who become too optimistic
with their intentions: Nudell, Joachim (Audiophysic),etc.
What a waste. But it seems to be very difficult to combine
design capability with the commercial one.
Which one is your 'baby' and which one can you recommend as
a 'smart choice'? And of course thanks for your responce.

Dear Ack, Someone with the name Graz should live in Graz
in Austria. This way I would be able to visit him in 10
hours. I thought that one need to order his drivers by him
in Australia and than do all the work himself. Thanks for
the info and site. Glad to see that this 'icon' has still
many admirer.

Regards to both,