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I've always had a weakness for McIntosh amplifiers - way back in the mid 80s when I first heard a pair of MC60s. There was something about that chrome, the mod looks, and the massive transformers that just screamed LOOK AT ME!
So when this showed up at my door to be part of my second (family) stereo system, I was pretty happy.
Yeah, I miss the glow of the tubes but I have that in my main rig.
Follow Ups:
The thing I always do to the 2100s and the 2105s and the 2505s is,recap the driver boards,resolder all the connections on those plug in pins on the driver boards,then clean the pins with tuner cleaner or Deoxit...Do that and you will be amazed.It's good to change the input rail caps but if you don't,I would bypass them with a 10uf poly cap on each big cap.
Honest amplification is better than excessive 2nd order distortion anytime.
In the past I did some cap replacement work on the MC250 and it did change the character of the amplifier - a little less vintage-y and more modern. So this time I want to proceed with caution... keeping the input caps but - as you recommend - do a clean up and PS cap job.
I always use Muse KZs or the NP muse caps. Jim McShane has them.
The 2100 series amps are quite good actually..With a decent tube preamp,they are similar in sonic nature to the tube Macs of the day when properly rebuilt..They had to be because there was a huge price jump from the Mc275 and the autoformers do quite well in helping achieve that.
Honest amplification is better than excessive 2nd order distortion anytime.
How do you like the sound?
I see these , and others up on CL - but I have yet to pull the trigger....
Happy listening
I'm still waiting to get a preamp for it, but I plugged my CD player directly into the inputs to test it out.
I've owned a MC250 in the past, and, not surprisingly, the two sound quite familiar. It's a bit of a "poor man's tube amp" - smooth but with some deep bass that is perhaps a hair underdamped. At least with my B&W Matrix 805 speakers. I consider it the Dynaco 70 of solid-state amplifiers - or is that the B&K ST-140? ;)
Pull the trigger, you will be hay. I used the Smaller brother, the MC250, as my main amp for decades before getting the metered version of the MC2100, the MC2105 that I used until just a couple of years ago when I when I started to downsize. Between them I first started in '69 and did not divorce until '12. Likely will come back to best life with some caps but they are simple circuits, lots of room and terribly easy to work on.
Don Brian Levy, J.D.
Toronto ON Canada
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