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Pre-amps

lakegville

lakegville

Active Member
Hello everyone....what a wonderful site. I have been acquiring vintage gear for about the last six months. It has become a hobby for me since i became disable. First I pulled in several of the silver face receivers from the 70's and now am "graduating" into some separates based on the advise of a friend. I purchased three Mcintosh amplifiers that were used by George Jones with his stage shows....the mc 2300, mc 2200, and mc 2120. All three were in need of service and are at the tech's now. Problem is i really do not have a pre-amp to devote to them. I do however have a Realistic STA 2300, Marantz 2325, and Pioneer SX 1050 receiver that have the main in/pre out functions on the back. Could i use these for my preamps? The use of a receiver as a preamp seems to be a rare practice...but at the same time a lot of the vintage receivers have this feature. Any comments would be much appreciated.
 
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I use several integrated amps as preamps. A receiver would work and you have a tuner too.
 
I used a Sui 9090 as a pre for a bit..hooked it up to just test an amp but it sounded good so let ran with it.
 
As mentioned, yes on pre outs into your Mac amps. Try a couple of the receivers for this function, you may find one of the receivers sounds better to you.

Food for thought...your Mac amps are some nice ones. After you get them back from your tech and have a listen to each of them, if you might sell the least favorite one and use the money to get a dedicated preamp. If remote control would be valuable to you, McIntosh made a C712 and C15 in the past that have that feature and sell for a pretty reasonable amount. If having a tuner is important, you can use any of your receiver's "tape out" jacks into the "aux in" of the pre. Your Marantz and Pioneer have nice tuners in them. Good luck.
 
onemug said:
As mentioned, yes on pre outs into your Mac amps. Try a couple of the receivers for this function, you may find one of the receivers sounds better to you.

Food for thought...your Mac amps are some nice ones. After you get them back from your tech and have a listen to each of them, if you might sell the least favorite one and use the money to get a dedicated preamp. If remote control would be valuable to you, McIntosh made a C712 and C15 in the past that have that feature and sell for a pretty reasonable amount. If having a tuner is important, you can use any of your receiver's "tape out" jacks into the "aux in" of the pre. Your Marantz and Pioneer have nice tuners in them. Good luck.
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Yes, thank you for the info on the remote...i was unaware of them. I am sure that i will be passing one along after i get a listen. I really need to cut a few loose at some point but, deciding which ones to go is not so easy. I just did not want sound quality to be compromised by using receivers as my preamps. I guess i have heard so much about the Mcintosh sound quality i wanted the amps to "shine" as best as possible. I wanted to see how the 2300 did compared to a Suie BA5k/CA3k combo which i have not listened to yet either and do an A/B test.
 
You definitely scored some great amps with provenance. There is a thread in the Mc forum here about the George Jones racks being parted out. You may enjoy reading it.
 
Great to hear from a fellow vintage collector. It's a great satisfying hobby to have (although,sadly a few tend to look down upon such things). Anyway,as for a pre-amp,you can't beat a dedicated standalone one... A Pioneer Spec 1 or even a Sansui CA-2000 would be great starters!
 
Thank you for telling me about that i would love to see it.....i will try and find it? These were on the Nashville CL for the longest time...they were some the last of his gear i was told by friend who picked them up for me. The guy selling them was his stage monitor man for a dozen years said he sold a dozen or so of the MC2300's for $1500 a piece to a person in St.Louis and they were all working. I guess i was a little suprised that he used this Mc gear for so long.
 
Was the seller's name Dave I wonder? If it is I bought a pair of rails from his 2300's from him shortly after George died a couple years ago. I have a pic somewhere of his 2 stacks of 2300's when I saw him play years ago. I was surprised to see them lugging around all that weight where modern amps would weigh about 1/10 of what those 2300's did.
 
Yes it was Dave....he seemed to be glad to be getting rid of the last of it. I saw a picture of the stacks just a little bit ago that someone uploaded...may have been yours. Lot's of weight!!!!
 
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