Mordaunt-Short Hi-Fi speakers

erikbloodaxe

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I am a new member. I am planning to upgrade to Home Cinema.
Q. If I decide to mix & match speakers, will my MS5.20 speakers be suitable as either front L & R or rear L & R? Spec: 65Hz-20KHz, Sensitivity 86dB for 1 watt input, 8 ohm, 15watts-100watts.

Cheers.

Erik. :rolleyes: :eek:
 
I have MS25i's all the way round (6 speakers) plus the matching centre and I am more than happy with their performance for the money paid. I also have a nice M&K sub as well though!

I think your Maudaunt Shorts are their smaller rage right? Still, I have liked the sound from all of the MS speakers I have heard, so I'm sure they will be fine. I know a guy who spends thousands on speakers who thinks that Maudaunt Short were one of the best speakers manufactureres in the world!?

Unless you really wanted dipole/tripole's for your surround speakers, I'd say use them at the rear/sides, or even as the back speakers in a 6/1 (7.1) EX/ES set up.

It is more important that your front 3 speakers match in tone than the rears, so if you can use 3 identical speakers at the front then this is the ideal, otherwise a center that is designed to match with a front L/R pair will do nicely.

GOOD LUCK!
 
the 5.20s were an older version of the Ms30s, and they were fantastic speakers.

have a bid on this centre speaker
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI....4996&item=3083079955&ssPageName=STRK:MEBWA:IT
its as cheap as chips atm, it was £250 only 3 or 4 years ago and will match your 5.20s near as dammit. Mordaunt Short now use metal cones which have totally different acoustic properties to the plastic cones your 5.20s have.

i use £600 MS30s with my system, after being dissatisfied with £2500 Celestion Kingstons. Furthermore, my CD player was £2300, after mods, my amp was £1500, power/mains leads were about £400 and i/cs were £600. Shows you how good Mordaunt Shorts are :)
 
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I used to use my ms10i as rears, they sounded a lot better than the missions i have up now.
 
bob1
as an aside, you can get the Tannoy Revolution centre for £92 from www.bennettsonline.co.uk which will match a LOT better to your fronts than the m7c2

roz
 
Originally posted by rozzar
bob1
as an aside, you can get the Tannoy Revolution centre for £92 from www.bennettsonline.co.uk which will match a LOT better to your fronts than the m7c2

roz

Too be honest i find the mission blends in quite well with the tannoys,infact they match the tannoys better than the m73's i had.Saying that if the tannoy center was silver i would jump in and get one.
 
rozzar,

At that price you must have the expensive version of the MS30 with real wood, which I think was part of the 'classic' range. I used to have the basic MS30 (RRP around £300), which I bought for half price when the newer 'i' range came out.

They were good speakers. I had the front baffle and drive units damped with large amounts of blu-tak, which resulted in a much better and more refined sound. I used to use them with Atacama SE24 stands.

I later sold the speakers to a guy who did not know about the mods, but he was obviously getting a better deal than he realised.
 
hi Mudan
yeh if you check my signature, its the Ms30i Classics I have rrp £600, i got mine in 1999 for £200- not sure if its real wood veneer, but its Rosewood colour. Not sure what else they did for the Classic status- the tweeters gold coloured, biwirable terminals and a cast chassis bass driver. I had the Mordaunt Short Performance 860s before, and yes they had far better bass but the imaging was absolutely appalling- worse than the ms30s and thats not saying a lot!

Re: damping the front baffle- that sounds very intriguing! i've managed to prise the plastic cover off the bass driver surround and tried to unscrew the drive unit to examine upgrading potential of caps, wiring etc but the drive unit doens't seem to want to come out.

how did you get yours out?

cheers
Rory
 
Rozzar, Did you say elsewhere that you work for Mordaunt Short ?

Mike.
 
no, i work for Bennetts Retail but we stock Mordaunt Short speakers (as well as some Tannoy, Mission, Wharfedale and embarassingly, Eltax)
Tons of Fun also on here works for Mordaunt Short, well, Audio Partnership who owns Mordaunt Short as well as some of the other Richer Sounds brands.
 
Rozzar,

With the MS30, they are built with internal bracing at each corner. In order to get at this bracing, you'll need to remove the rubber mounts on the baffle that hold the front protective cover in place, which can be scooped out with a flat head screwdriver. If you look round the back of the speaker, you should find 4 circular caps in the corners which support the other side of the bracing, although I can't recall whether these need to be removed.
Either way, once the bracing is loosened, you'll be able to remove the front baffle, although you will need to disconnect and remove the drivers first, although I'm not too sure why yours didn't come straight out. May be you'll need to have a look by removing the speaker terminal first..

It may be the Classic ones you have are held together differently.

The gold anodised tweeters on the MS range came with the updated 'i' series. Mine were the original MS with the silver ones.
If you haven't tried already, providing you don't have any inquisitive kids around, I'd recommend removing the round metal mesh grille that protects the tweeter, which can help open up the treble. They're held magnetically in place and can be carefully levered out with a small screwdriver.
I believe that the MS range were designed by the same people who did the Epos ES range (esp ES11). Look at the physical similarities of the drivers esp. the phase plug on the bass driver.
 
Originally posted by mudan
I believe that the MS range were designed by the same people who did the Epos ES range (esp ES11). Look at the physical similarities of the drivers esp. the phase plug on the bass driver.

Graeme Foy (our current designer) was late of Epos when they and MS were owned by the same company. Epos is now of course owned by Mike Creek. There are ranges of Epos/MS with a goodly number of interchangeable parts but now we've gone our seperate ways, there isn't any more. Was impressed by the ELS3 when I heard a pair although of course it was soundly beaten in the HiFi World group test by the MS912 :D.
 
Thanks for the Epos- MS link confirmation, Tons of Fun.

Another amusing, well I guess not that amusing on initial discovery, was my MS30's construction. I bought them for a great price from Hyper-Fi and on taking them out of the boxes, discovered that the front baffles were extremely loose on both speakers - something I had never seen in a new speaker set! Obviously the workers at MS had been slack on this one! I was initially annoyed but then rather than return them and all the hassle that would come with it, decided to put them together 'properly' myself. That's when I learned about how its internal bracing worked. Overtightening would obviously crack the front baffle or rear brace, so had to be real careful when doing so.
 

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