McIntosh 2100 Amp?

 

Bronze Member
Username: Lovegasoline

NYC

Post Number: 49
Registered: Jul-05
What sort of sound would this amp be best suited for?
A curiosity as I saw one very cheap (about$200)...
??
Thanks if anyone can shed some light on this piece off gear.
 

Gold Member
Username: Jan_b_vigne

Dallas, TX

Post Number: 5773
Registered: May-04

"What sort of sound would this amp be best suited for?"

Sorry, I don't know what you're asking. Mac is full and accurate, warm and tight, seductive and plain.

Mac is what the music demands based on what the music asks of the Mac gear.

Read any review of McIntosh equipment. For the most part, McIntosh is McIntosh and has not varied in over fifty years.




 

Bronze Member
Username: Lovegasoline

NYC

Post Number: 50
Registered: Jul-05
Jan, I''ve read so many exchanges & reviews where qualities of particular amps are exalted or denounced.... in reproducing certain frequency ranges, clarity, and on and on and on. The followup seems to be that individual amps are better or worse suited for particular genres of music, etc.
That was the gist of the question and if I've been a victim of reading bad commentary or drawing wrong interpretations from good commentary I'm open to being corrected.

Also, coming from someone with limited euipment experience, I'm alittle confused with the function of something like the MC2100. I see McIntosh preamps from that era (C28,C29) and they appear to have a plethora of inputs for tuners/tapes/etc along with phono inputs...I had thought a preamp was strictly for a phono...to amplify the phono signal befoer it reached the amp. Will an amp such as the MC2100 accept a source (ie., CD player, tuner) directly?

I'm bottom feeding. I just happened across it and have read much aclaim for McIntosh equipment. I understand it's not a tube amp like much of the classic McIntosh ampline, and it's old, but the age and the fact that it's ugly as sin do not put me off if it would be a step up from what I have now (Yamaha A-700) and give me a better BUDGET foundation to build onto.


 

Gold Member
Username: Jan_b_vigne

Dallas, TX

Post Number: 5775
Registered: May-04

http://www.circlestereo.com/info/brands/mcintosh/?content=mc2100

http://reviews.iwon.com/cat/audioreview/amplification/amplifiers/mcintosh/PRD_12 4195_1583crx.aspx

http://www.audioasylum.com/scripts/t.pl?f=vintage&m=10922




OK, first, when you read the links, you'll find the MC2100 is built on the old chromed chassis from the MC240 tube amps. I happen to own two of the MC240's which I use as my main system. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder with these amps. I happen to love the retro look.


The 2100 has volume controls which would allow you to run your CD player directly into the amplifier. This assumes the volume controls are in ggod shape on the amp. They might be every dirty and need either a good cleaning or replacement. This volume control might work out very well for you or might present the typical problems of a passive pre amp. For information on the ins and outs of passive designs go to the "pre amp" section of the forum and read some of the comments there.

While I consider any McIntosh worth owning, I have some reservations about why a 2100 would be selling for so little money. Read the article from Circle Stereo concerning re-doing a 2100. If the capacitors have not been changed since the amp was new, you could wind up with a relatively expensive repair job. Read below to find out some possibilities.

I would tell you the 2100 is a much better amp than the Yamaha, but you have to decide what sound you like. I don't view amplifers as having a sound that is correct or better for one sort of music. Speakers might, but amps should just amplify and nothing else. It is the cumulative system "sound" which might lean toward a certain sort of music. Mac does have a sound of its own as does the Yamaha, but I would not tell you that alone will suit a sort of music. As you develop a system my advice is always to build on the strengths of the equipment you own and not use one piece of equipment as a BandAid for what another piece does. Make the system work together instead of patching one piece with another.

I would ask a few questions about condition before I got into a cheap 30 year old amplifier whether it's a McIntosh or not. Fortunately parts for old Macs are generally available without problems. The specific transistors used in the outputs might be unavailable as transistors are not all in current production like most tubes are. Audio Classics will do repair on old Mac as will a few other shops, but you have to pay to ship it back and forth. That's not cheap when you consider the weight of the autoformers and power tansformer on a 2100.

In general, as long as the gear is in working condition and physically decent shape, you can buy old McIntosh to use for a year or two and still sell it for what you paid. That's almost free hifi.

Read the links and let me know if you have specific questions not answered here.

http://www.audioclassics.com/

https://www.ecoustics.com/electronics/forum/home-audio/115465.html

https://www.ecoustics.com/electronics/forum/home-audio/150740.html

https://www.ecoustics.com/electronics/forum/home-audio/110985.html

https://www.ecoustics.com/electronics/forum/home-audio/114277.html

https://www.ecoustics.com/electronics/forum/home-audio/56618.html

 

Bronze Member
Username: Lovegasoline

NYC

Post Number: 51
Registered: Jul-05
Rats, the amp sold already(!)...the guy said he received an overwhelming amount of offers to buy it and it went to the first commited buyer.
In anycase, I'm going to read the referenced materials...thanks for posting them Jan and for your impressions. If I expect to build up a system relatively inexpensively, I need to become more familiar with some vintage gear so I can take advantage of good deals as they whizz by me.
Aesthetics, eye of the beholder and all that is proper...however, some of those older McIntoshes I've seen images of are just stunning pieces of design. Stunning.
Oh well, I'll keep on fishing.
 

Bronze Member
Username: Lovegasoline

NYC

Post Number: 52
Registered: Jul-05
OK, I just took a peek at the MC240...yeah, that's one of the sexy ones!

http://www.berners.ch/McIntosh/en/Frame_McIntosh.htm

(good McIntosh site BTW)
 

Bronze Member
Username: Lovegasoline

NYC

Post Number: 53
Registered: Jul-05
I'm still wading through the texts you referenced and probably will be for several days++.
I went clean through Circle Stereo's web site and it was informative. In fact, before I made the first post I was doing an Ebay search and Circle Stereo's 'refurb' auction for the 2100 came up and I read through it. From their description, it appears they do a hell of a job on bringing those old gals up to spec.

OK, the one that inspried the post got away. Circle Stereo's warning about the unseen expense of buying used vintage is well taken. I'm curious though if there are readily availible 'refurb kits' or commonly availible parts lists for the DIY'er wishing to attempt a basic refurb. Desoldering caps, and resisters, cleaning corrosion and contacts, cleaning controls & pots or replacing them...that's all within my reach (the diagnostics and testing would be new to me). I realize transistors get obsoleted with regularity, but maybe buying a bag of the recommended parts (caps and such) and doing the work onself could make a piece of vintage gear economical.
Has anyone done that with something along the lines of one of the older 1960s-80s McIntosh amps, or something of similiar quality and desirability from that era?
 

Gold Member
Username: Jan_b_vigne

Dallas, TX

Post Number: 5777
Registered: May-04


Yes and no. Some parts kits have been available and may be still. The problem with a generic parts kit is it either covers too much or too little. When it comes to rebuilding old amps, even well know products such as McIntosh or the original Marantz products, everyone has their own ideas about what they want in the final product. Unlike refurbing a 1965 Corvette, most people are not looking for factory stock finish. In many cases, it's impossible to achieve. The parts simply do not exist.

People tend to go about picking the brand and quality of parts depending on what they think the amp should sound like when they're done. But whether you pick plain resistors and caps or fancy, expensive parts you must begin with a schematic. From that you can pick whatever quality you want and order the parts, choosing how much you want to spend.

If you try this, keep a few things in mind. Never throw away the old parts. Whether they work or not, somone will pay you more for a stock amp than a modified amp. Having the old parts is worth keeping a bag of parts in the closet. Replace as few a number of parts as possible at any one time. Similarly, strip one channel at a time and compare what you see with what you started with. DO NOT strip the boards clean and try to remember where parts go. Desoldering and soldering are basic skills. Soldering is more involved than it appears. If you haven't acquired the correct skills to do the job properly, get them before you dive into an amplifier. A bad solder joint wil haunt you and be very troublesome to find. While the replacement of parts is simple enough, if you misplace one part, you could damage the amp. When I replaced parts on my amplifiers I misplaced a 5K and 50k resistor. The amp worked but had lots of distortion in one channel. It was basic detective work that found the problem, but since it was just the multiplier on the resistor band that gave it away, it was a day's worth of hunting to find the problem.

Finally, if you acquire an amplifier that is well known for the quality of the original circuit, I would suggest you leave the circuit alone. Do not modify the circuit of an excellent amplifier. Replace parts but nothing more. The old guys knew what they were doing and on an amplifier like the McIntosh, you can easily defeat the good things the amp did by trying to be smarter than the original engineers.

If you get an amplifier like a Dynaco ST70 or MkIII, there are plenty of modification kits available. The amps are still reasonably priced (though a long way from the $25 I used to pay for one) and everyone acknowledges it was a good amp that can be made better with a few mods.


P.S. - Everyone interested in audio should own a Dynaco ST70 at least once.




 

Gold Member
Username: Artk

Albany, Oregon USA

Post Number: 1693
Registered: Feb-05
I don't know about the Dynaco, but I certainly aspire to Mac or AR before I go to the great audio showroom in the sky.
 

Bronze Member
Username: Lovegasoline

NYC

Post Number: 55
Registered: Jul-05
Any idea what a BASIC rebuild job costs in electronic parts alone (minus labor)? I realize this is a hugley vague question but is there a ballpark figure for caps/resistors/etc that go into a restoration job? $50? $100? $150?

Dynaco:
Last year I was reading Hunter S. Thompson's collected Letters [Fear and Loathing in America, The Gonzo Letters, Volume II] and one letter was to the General Manager of Dynaco, Inc. He bitched to them that he had sent a letter & a buck for an owner's manual and never received acknowledgement. He was having hook up issues with a PAS and 70-A in trying to record from LPs to tape and also railed against them for their institutional bias against including a headphone jack in their designs.
He seemd to be quite fond of his audio equipment and had the luxury of blasting it at high volumes in his mountain fortress.

What is it about a Dynaco that is desirable?
 

Gold Member
Username: Jan_b_vigne

Dallas, TX

Post Number: 5809
Registered: May-04


The PAS and ST70 are considered excellent budget designs. In the tube world, transformers and power supplies are the key to performance and Dynaco began as a transformer design/winding company. So, despite their minimal cost, their transformers put them ahead of the the competition. The bunch of designers at Dynaco were also very inventive and are generally given credit for creating the UltraLinear connection. Beyond that small amount of information, I would suggest you research Dynaco on your own. What you read will give you a good education in audio's history over the last half century.


You can figure out what a rebuild will cost by looking at the rebuild kits for a ST70. There is no way to guess what a generic rebuild will cost since some amps will require more replacement parts than others. Also an amplifier such as a McIntosh utilized several gain stages, with subsequently more parts, and maintained tighter tolerances than a budget line Dynaco. The specs were also better on the McIntosh because of this, but the Dynaco is still regarded as an excellent amplifier.


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