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Best looking amp of all time.


kohill

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I have had a few amps in my time. I know it may seem stupid to some people, but I like an amp that looks as good as it sounds.

Right now I have a McIntosh MC-250 and a MC-2100 on the way. They look very retro and sound good too. I am being romanced by

something newer though. I can't get over the looks of the big Macs. The 402 and 501 are lookers for sure. I know that they will sound

awesome as well. So what do you guys consider the best looking amps of all time?

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I like the vintage Mac look - a LOT. I actually prefer the older "before blue eyes" versions lookwise whether SS or tube. MC-30, MC-60, MC-250, MC-2100....more chrome works for me!

I also like amps that are more "industrial" or simple in look. Like VRDs, with massive iron and a simple yet beefy appearance with tubes exposed that says what it does and does what it says. Black boxes with lots of blinky lights.....just a bit too "common/pedestrian/everybody in the biz has tried it" for me. "Simply overbuilt" works better here.

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WAVAC is now offering a $50,000 monoblock amplifier which uses the 833A transmitting tube for output. It also uses a triode-wired KT88 for the driver stage. The highly praised (and soon to be in production again) Western Electric 437A tube is used for the input stage. Running in Class A by using Nobu Shishido's design talents this unit is capable of 100 wpc.! The chassis is milled out of a solid block of aerospace-grade aluminum. This is a capacitor free, directly coupled design for the purest of musical reproduction. If i was a rich man...

WAVAC Audio Lab.
Yoshiki Industrial Co., Ltd.
1-38 Matugasaki 2-chrome
Yonezawa Yamagata
992-0053 Japan

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Salivation Army outposts in my neck o' the woods turn away all electronics. They don't have to staff to evaluate them...

The one smiling up at you,

dusty Mullards barely discernable,

from behind the Lawrence Welk LPs at the Salvation Army.

Tell 'em "Don't worry about it. That's MY job!"

Dave

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Marantz 2 with the amber meter. Elegant and business like at the same time.

SAE Mark III - So it didn't sound so great. Proof that "Handsome is" is not necessarily the same as "Handsome does."

McIntosh MC-2125

McIntosh MC-2505 Everything just looks right on these two amps.

McIntosh MC-2300 Sits there and seems to say "Myself am POWER!"

E. H. Scott put some chrome plated beauties in their consoles in the forties and fifties.

I forget the model, but Grommes has a little tube amp with a chrome chassis that looks like a baby Mac.

Marantz 9 Doesn't look particularly dated when it's forty years old.

From the "Golden Glow of Wretched Excess" department - Gold plated Mc-275

Golden Tube Audio had some nice looking amps too - too bad they were roaringly unreliable.

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>E. H. Scott put some chrome plated beauties in their consoles in the forties and fifties.

I shall carry to my deathbed my regret at not liberating the E.H. Scott AM/FM/Amp from my studio at the Post Information Office where I served as broadcast liason in my last year in the Army, 1973. I was not so young and stupid not to recognize its extraordinary beauty and the God knows how many tubes said "you can pick up Tierra del Fuego on this baby with a coat hanger," but I did not realize just how rare and desirable these things were even at that time. It was certainly long past any use in national defense and probably wound up in a junk heap. [:'(]

Then there was the 8X10 Deardorff wood field camera in the photo lab gathering dust at Sheppard Air Force Base where I was running the film audio studio...

Lord, why do I resist temptation so well???????????

Dave

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