Why did McIntosh use Female XLR jacks as output connections on some preamps?

I can't imagine they would try to change conventional standards, I think its an error at the factory, irrespective of it being pro gear or not, there is a standard and that's not it.....
Does this increase the value, like improperly minted coins?
 
Some cheap cables have backwards wiring but Mac that I know of have never did that.

Well, all the Mc gear I have with XLR's follows convention which makes me think this could be an error....

That would be a rather hard to miss error. Perhaps a special order for some special situation, maybe. :dunno:

Well depending on the type and style of XLR used, the hole size is different from male to female as well, so when the panel was pressed, it may have been pressed with the wrong hole.....who would know, its a strange anomaly thats for sure.
 
Well, all the Mc gear I have with XLR's follows convention which makes me think this could be an error....



Well depending on the type and style of XLR used, the hole size is different from male to female as well, so when the panel was pressed, it may have been pressed with the wrong hole.....who would know, its a strange anomaly thats for sure.
A customer could have changed it to fit some goofy Chinese amp or the likes, and or ordered it that way, but it really is still wrong and would need adapters to work for others.
 
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If you look at the pics on the first page, it seems there is another one apart from the OP's one which has this.
Looks like they use the Neutrik connectors that use the same hole size for male and female...
Maybe they ran out of males on that run....lol....

Yeah I'd call up McIntosh, I reckon they would change them to males for no charge......
 
maybe they changed at at a certain serial number .
lower number in the pics shows female so maybe they realised somewhere between those numbers ..someone on the end of a phone might know ..or send some leads out for free .
 
Wow. Wasn't the C35 the first Mc pre with XLR outputs? Maybe the first few dozen units were shipped that way before they caught the error.

I'm sure ron-c, c_dk, or twiiii would recall.
 
Wow. Wasn't the C35 the first Mc pre with XLR outputs? Maybe the first few dozen units were shipped that way before they caught the error.

I'm sure ron-c, c_dk, or twiiii would recall.
Yeah thats what I think it might be too....
 
Do a wiki search for Canon XLR.......until 1990 or so there were few worldwide standards that followed Jim Canon's early design. European, Japanese, and American manufacturers followed their own national conventions.

The many footnotes are interesting tidbits highlighting the confusion.

The C35 was the first Mac with Canon outputs, as we called them back then, that I can remember. The MC7100,7200, and 7300 were the first amps.

Pin 3 hot was a American tradition, while pin 2 was Europes choice. While the male pins pointed towards the signal flow for some, many Japanese manufacturers insisted they should go the other way.

Mac must have changed the connectors to follow the AES published standards that came out in the middle of the preamps production run, sometime in 1990. If I get some time tomarrow I will pull the amp and preamp schematics and see what pin is "hot".
 
I still have to correct myself and call them XLR's, because I still tend to call them canon....the young folk have no idea what I am talking about!!

I have been around XLR pro gear since the '80s and I have never seen Japanese gear following anything other than Male=output convention....

However in New Zealand here we used American, UK and Japanese gear which was always a challenge amalgamating pin 3/pin 2 standards!!

Would be interesting to see what McIntosh's reasoning was.........I'm betting McIntosh is pin 2 hot.
 
Well, I don't know why the male outputs were used, but it was not a mistake and it was not an anomaly. Nor a special order nor consumer DIY change.

The early C35's were made with male outputs. And concurrently, the C36 (export), C37 and C38 also used the male XLR outputs. It looks like late production C35 and then later pre-amps were produced with female outputs.

C36:
C 36 JK 1262 Left rear.jpg


C37:
C 37 CD1098 EARLY REAR.jpg


C38:
C 38 HC1423 LEFT REAR PANEL.jpg

Larry
 
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