Mac vs the Japanese

[exracer]

Whats there to open when your amp looks this good on the outside?

Thanks to Mc Man for the picture of his bedroom system

 

[hwirt]

A few Mac Nudes; old solid state and old tube

Typical Performance:

 

[Vintage Pete]

Mac Nudies

Here are some nudies of my C32 and MC2205...

Pete

 

[jstang]

Cool....very cool....now we are cooking....

Hmmmmm....have to stare for an hour or two.....

What year is the 2300 from ? Will have to dig up some specs... I read a little about it in the past but never heard one....



jk

 

[Vintage Pete]

More Mac Nudies

Don't know how much these qualify as vintage, but here are some nudies of my C40 and MC300. (early ninieties vintage). I have since traded up the MC300 for MC501's.

Pete

 

[grumpy]

If you read my posts you will see that I did. Remember the original question posed was a call for opnions of how McIntosh compares to Japanese and my post did just that. It was not meant to be taken personally or to offend anyone. I just posted what I believe and WHY. Hey if you are a McIntosh fan great, I am not trying to dissuade you. It's the bystander looking at it objectively from the outside I was addressing my comments to. It appears by now we are kicking a dead cow however.

Personally I think asking such a broad question such as mac versus Japanese seems rather futile to even attempt answering.

Comparing one company to everything ever made by another country is just plain silly.

 

[Elroy]

Ok... Seeing you guys are neither willing nor strong enough to lift your Mac ( nor have a screw driver )...

:lmao:

Comparing one company to everything ever made by another country is just plain silly.

Probably so, but our efforts have not been totally in vain, look at the great pictures! One word: IMPRESSIVE!

Maybe I can get off my lazy a$$ and pull my Accuphases off the rack for a couple of shots.

 

[Elroy]

Dadgum that MC-2300 is a BEAST! My hats off the fellow who lugged that into position!

 

[cmb3366]

Ok... Seeing you guys are neither willing nor strong enough to lift your Mac ( nor have a screw driver )... Here's a nude of an 85 pound Marantz Model 500 ( there's 4 of those 21,000uf caps and more for total of 100,000uf ).... Vintage SS amp from 1974.....load invariant. How about some pics of a 65 pound 10b, talk about pure sex....

Price is no excuse not to take pic, the 500 & 10b is way up there in resale value.....and something on warranty still is not vintage...

Come on open the kimono...and lets see.
QUOTE]


First, Mac's dont wear kimono's, We wear blue jeans here in Binghamton .

And as far as preamps with a warranty not being vintage, she was built in 1987, So I dare say its vintage. One of the joys of buying McIntosh, is we have dealers stateside that deal in vintage gear, who go through them, ensure they still beat factory specs, repair them if need be, and stand behind them just as if they were new, Audio Classics is one such dealer, and if you buy their certified used, you are have a vintage, waranty'd to be in-spec unit, and if you have trouble, they take care of it through their in-house service department.

As for nudies, You goaded me into it, here's some bare pics of my McIntosh 2100, its 38 years young:scratch2:, and still playing fantastic music:

I appologize for not removing the cage for the top pics, not in the mood to scare up my sockets, just think of it as looking through fishnet stockings

 

[jstang]

Here comes the real silliness.....I mean debate.

Auto-Former....Pros and Cons of having it....?

I'll start with a few I can think of, if its ok with you.....mind you I have only read about the topic and never owned one...

Pros...
1. Good for helping drive un-godly low loads... But thats all I know about it.... Helps keep output transistors in a SOA current. Built in impedance matching.

Cons...

1. For me.... Auto-former means low DF.... Which is not a good match for my old Ohms...they need tons of dampening.


But are there other technical +/- attributes of the Auto-former..... Is that where the MAC Voicing comes from....?

The 2300 is a really cool box....but for me to buy it and rip out the autoformers to get higher DF, would just start a real fight with you guys.... .... they seem to go for a reasonable price for a very TOTL amp...problem is they would force me away from the Ohms and that ain't going to happen.



johnk

 

[cmb3366]

I would say the Autoformer IS what makes a Mac amplifier sound like a Mac. I cannot stand the sound of a low DF Mac on some of the newer small woofer-2 ways, its great on the tweeter, but not fast enough on the midwoofer, biamp and run the woofers on somethign high DF, and its fantastic.

Now, put that very Low DF Mac (mine runs 11) on some large woofer 3-ways, and you've got magic, the mids and highs are silky, and the woofer has a low-df, smooth tubey sound.

From what I've heard, this is a drastically reduced phenemon in the newer Autoformer Macs, they run high enough DF to sound good on anything, but loose a touch of that silky sound on large woofer 2-way.

 

[jstang]

First, Mac's dont wear kimono's, We wear blue jeans here in Binghamton .

Well the 500 was made in CA.... But I think they wear kimonos too.... (here we go...CA folks start fighting with Jersey boy )


I bought my Marantz 10b, 7t, 15 and SLT ( all US made ) from an original owner in Binghamton NY..... which I thought was a bit ironic at the time when I picked them up....

 

['cisco]

Its probably more of an issue of enjoying them so much so that it's just not worth the effort to remove them from the rack and remove the covers!

:lmao::lmao:

You know that old saying....."BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR"....

jstang.....that's a beautiful 500.......:drool:

Elroy...can't wait for your pics of your Accuphase....:drool:

Gentlemen and the Ladies too.......it's probably been said here a few times before but...let's just point out here that it's all about the music. No matter who or what country produces the equipment, no matter what technology or style a company uses.....it all comes down to "what ever floats your boat".

So we can all "agree to disagree" on what ever equipment we decide that sounds best to us........ on that note...... what ever kind of music we're listening to at this moment.......let's just turn up the volume and enjoy ourselves....

 

[Vintage Pete]

The 2300 is a really cool box....but for me to buy it and rip out the autoformers to get higher DF, would just start a real fight with you guys.... johnk

:nono: :thumbsdn: :uzi: :nono:

 

[cmb3366]

Hanging with this crowd has been a really bad influence, and I say that in the fondest way possible.

After some thought, I suppose there's no purpose owning a piece of gear and being afraid to pop the hood and see how she runs, so my conscience be damned, I reneged on my former refusal, and opened up my Preamp. It wasn't nearly as painful as I expected

Here's some 'low angle stuff' of my Mc504 Preamplifier.

 

[onepixel]

Personally I think asking such a broad question such as mac versus Japanese seems rather futile to even attempt answering.

Comparing one company to everything ever made by another country is just plain silly.

Yup.. sure is.

But hey it's got the Mac guys to come out and play. And boy.. those sure are some pretty impressive pics.

 

[Elroy]

Ok, after all of the jibber jabbering I have been doing , I will submit these photos of my Accuphase's and let them speak for themselves. These are of my P-360 amp and my C-260 "Control Center" as Accuphase calls it (when you see the plethora of available inputs, outputs and the ability to control them you see why).

 

[onepixel]

Holy.. cap!

Awesome.

 

['cisco]

Nice pics Elroy......:drool:.................thank you :yes:

btw....we have the same kind of rack

http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=181590

 

[Elroy]

Here's a couple of links to Accuphase's wbsite and detailed information in .pdf format for both the P-360 and the C-260:
http://www.accuphase.com/historys/cate/c-260en.pdf
http://www.accuphase.com/historys/cate/p-360en.pdf