MC-2500 restoration

jeffs79

Active Member
Thought I'd share pics of my shipping damaged MC2500 "restoration".
I learned of this unit here on AK when a member mentioned that they'd seen first hand what kind of damage could come from packing a 130lb amp in packing peanuts...
I inquired about it and sure enough it was available - although in pieces. Understandably, they were not in a hurry to move this thing around - let alone package it up and ship it.
It was about 2 years of emails back and forth before they were ready to ship it, which worked well as I was able to locate pieces and parts that I knew I'd need.

Pics of how it looked when it arrived:
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I was fortunate enough to run into a handful of parts over the wait period. Modutec manufactured meters for McIntosh and a box of them were picked up at a hamfest. These were used to rebuild the badly damaged stock meter. The key piece was a face plate. Luckily, a black face plate popped up on ebay.

With the amp disassembled I was able to hammer out most of the major damage. All of the exterior metal parts except for the rear were sent over to my regular paint shop. I declined to re-paint and re-silkscreen the rear. Mainly to keep costs down, but I also wanted to keep some of the amp's "as found" character.
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I was able to remove a meter needle from one of the modutec meters and successfully transplant it onto the damaged 2500 meter. Later MC-2500 used blue plexi over the meter instead of blue colored lenses. I was able to swap clear lenses from the parts units over to the 2500 meter and purchased the plexi from McIntosh.20170515_185524.jpg 20170515_190426.jpg
 
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There were a dozen or so smaller issues that had to be dealt with but once they were sorted out it went back together rather easily.

After recapping and replacing some transistors everything checked out. Both channels exceed spec on my bench and it currently runs a pair of Acoustic Research AR-9's They enjoy the power and I enjoy owning it!

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A huge thank you to the fellow AK'er who stuck with me on this. I don't want to call him out by name but he's a huge asset to this community. I'm grateful for what I've learned from his posts over the years and that he went to such efforts to get this beast to me!
 
McIntosh stills carries the painted block diagram decal if you want to install one. I hope you enjoy your labor of love. What speakers are you driving? These amps are great to run lower efficiency speakers. I use mine daily I also received poorly packaged and I also fixed it up.
 
Very nicely done. Had you not invested the time in it, the amp may have been parted out. That in and of itself would be quite rewarding.

VB got my spare handles when his was wrecked in transit.

Imagine packing a 130lb multi- thousand dollar metal object in packing peanuts. What kind of a moron would you be to do so?
 
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