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Tubes bad in 80 days on new Mc275? Are they BS'ing me?


32blownhemi

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On 5/5/2019 at 2:24 PM, ILI said:

 

Edit:

McIntosh' warranty is 3 years for hifi gear, except for tubes.

I just checked. It is the same in Europe.

Also other tube sellers in Europe only give limited warranty, or none...

It's the same for batteries, I guess.

 

$6400 for a brand new McIntosh tube amplifier and 80 days in you have zero warranty on the tubes? The local Mac dealer is denying warranty coverage on defective tubes?

Actually I just searched the Mac warranty in the USA and Canada. Its 3 years electronics, 90 days on the tubes.

 

An iconic manufacturer like McIntosh where today you pay a hefty premium for a high quality product, and you could be spending $300-400 for replacement tubes 92 days into ownership?

Read the warranty....within the warranty period the owner pays for shipping both ways. Mac doesn't even cover the cost of return shipping to owner if you must return unit for repairs.

No thanks, I will stick to quality solid state amplification/receiver.

 

Tried to attach the Mac warranty pdf here but the file is too large for site limits. But there's more than one way to skin a cat. 

 

 

mac warranty.jpg

Edited by polizzio
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I would like to add that most tube gear just works and you will never have trouble with it. I am the fourth own for my 2A3 amplifiers, and I have had them for about 12 years. A year or so ago I had to have some work done on them, but they have been great amps. The prices on teh used market haven't gone down. These are probably getting on to almost 20 years old. 

 

You can probably find folks who have bought SS gear with a stellar reputation but have a product that just turned into a problem. Sad, but every company has that happen.

 

Bruce

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5 minutes ago, Marvel said:

I would like to add that most tube gear just works and you will never have trouble with it. I am the fourth own for my 2A3 amplifiers, and I have had them for about 12 years. A year or so ago I had to have some work done on them, but they have been great amps. The prices on teh used market haven't gone down. These are probably getting on to almost 20 years old. 

 

You can probably find folks who have bought SS gear with a stellar reputation but have a product that just turned into a problem. Sad, but every company has that happen.

 

Bruce

 

You sure are right. When you 'bought a lemmon', whether it's a solid state amp or a tube amp, it doesn't matter. Fact is, that in that situation, the consumer is often on the losing end. Some companies will do the honorable thing, which is to take back the faulty product and replace it by a new one. They should, of course, but some will only do so when you push real hard and threaten to take them to court, perhaps backed by some consumer protection organization.

In this case, the tubes were damaged by a malfunction in the amp, with obvious cause and effect. That would be enough legal ground to take them to court.

 

As a first step, the OP could send them an official letter of complaint. There is help online for this:

https://www.usa.gov/consumer-complaints

and here:

https://www.bbb.org/

 

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19 hours ago, polizzio said:

 

$6400 for a brand new McIntosh tube amplifier and 80 days in you have zero warranty on the tubes? The local Mac dealer is denying warranty coverage on defective tubes?

Actually I just searched the Mac warranty in the USA and Canada. Its 3 years electronics, 90 days on the tubes.

 

An iconic manufacturer like McIntosh where today you pay a hefty premium for a high quality product, and you could be spending $300-400 for replacement tubes 92 days into ownership?

Read the warranty....within the warranty period the owner pays for shipping both ways. Mac doesn't even cover the cost of return shipping to owner if you must return unit for repairs.

No thanks, I will stick to quality solid state amplification/receiver.

 

Tried to attach the Mac warranty pdf here but the file is too large for site limits. But there's more than one way to skin a cat. 

 

 

mac warranty.jpg

I only had the amp hooked up for 80 days but I'd owed it longer. So hence over 90 days & out of warrantee on the tubes... 

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17 hours ago, ILI said:

 

You sure are right. When you 'bought a lemmon', whether it's a solid state amp or a tube amp, it doesn't matter. Fact is, that in that situation, the consumer is often on the losing end. Some companies will do the honorable thing, which is to take back the faulty product and replace it by a new one. They should, of course, but some will only do so when you push real hard and threaten to take them to court, perhaps backed by some consumer protection organization.

In this case, the tubes were damaged by a malfunction in the amp, with obvious cause and effect. That would be enough legal ground to take them to court.

 

As a first step, the OP could send them an official letter of complaint. There is help online for this:

https://www.usa.gov/consumer-complaints

and here:

https://www.bbb.org/

 

Thanks for the links. They sent me a return mail label to send the amp back so we'll see what happens....  Bill

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13 hours ago, 32blownhemi said:

Thanks for the links. They sent me a return mail label to send the amp back so we'll see what happens....  Bill

I bet the H/K arrives well before you get the Mac back...when you get it just PM me if the pots need cleaning...it has a crap-load of fast blow fuses on its rear and inside of it, and they ALL need to be the correct fast blow ones in the correct amperage...I will send you the tech and user manuals in PDF, too!...but its best to do that in e-mail!  It is ALWAYS best to do what needs doing before using it very much...since they were made so long ago! (early to mid 70's!)...so before you even hook it up, just send me a PM!

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On 5/8/2019 at 1:45 PM, HDBRbuilder said:

I bet the H/K arrives well before you get the Mac back...when you get it just PM me if the pots need cleaning...it has a crap-load of fast blow fuses on its rear and inside of it, and they ALL need to be the correct fast blow ones in the correct amperage...I will send you the tech and user manuals in PDF, too!...but its best to do that in e-mail!  It is ALWAYS best to do what needs doing before using it very much...since they were made so long ago! (early to mid 70's!)...so before you even hook it up, just send me a PM!

 Thank You HDBRbuilder!  The amp should be here Monday & I'll PM you when it arrives. My e-mail is billwhoo@reagan.com...  And I watched a You Tube video on 'cleaning the pots' ... Whats the best way to hook up my Mac Book Air (I run the music through Amarra) to the H/K 430? I googled it and just got confused....  Thanks again!   Bill

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1 hour ago, 32blownhemi said:

 Thank You HDBRbuilder!  The amp should be here Monday & I'll PM you when it arrives. My e-mail is billwhoo@reagan.com...  And I watched a You Tube video on 'cleaning the pots' ... Whats the best way to hook up my Mac Book Air (I run the music through Amarra) to the H/K 430? I googled it and just got confused....  Thanks again!   Bill

Computer stereo headphone out jack w/split L&R RCA inputs at opposite end of  cable to H/K 430 pre-aux-in...that's how I do it, anyway...worked great on my Heresys...sometimes kinda hard to find the underlined part of what I just wrote, though but can find it on eBay for sure.

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59 minutes ago, HDBRbuilder said:

Computer stereo headphone out jack/split RCA inputs cable to 430 pre-aux-in...that's how I do it, anyway...worked great on my Heresys...sometimes kinda hard to find the underlined part of what I just wrote, though but can find it on eBay for sure.

 

Thank You! Got it on Amazon & it'll be here Monday!  :)    Bill

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1 hour ago, 32blownhemi said:

Whew! You had me worried!  Lol...  And I have the adapter to hook up the amp to my i Phone too...

What I did NOT want you to end up with was one that had the FEMALE on the end of it instead of the male for the headphone jack...I was worried that my description might have been confusing...but you're good!...plus you'll have plenty of length with 10 ft.!

 

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12 hours ago, 32blownhemi said:

Whew! You had me worried!  Lol...  And I have the adapter to hook up the amp to my i Phone too...

OK., I finally found my cheat sheet of URL's for old H/K receiver tech manuals and user manuals, But the H/K 430 user manual no longer comes up...even though the tech manual for it does!

So, I will have to hunt it down, again!

Here is the URL for the PDF of the H/K 430 Technical Manual though:

        http://manuals.harman.com/hk/Service Manual/hk430 sm.pdf

I am also sending some other "cool stuff to have" as attachments in an e-mail to you, as soon as I can figure out where I put it in my files!  LOL!  So bear with me!

The best advice I can give you on this manual is to actually SAVE a PDF COPY of it into a file-folder designated FOR your unit...and be sure that folder is backed-up elsewhere., instead of just relying on it to be available at the URL address "forever"....BECAUSE that could change at any time, but if you already have it saved in PDF it won't be a problem...RIGHT?  What I have been noticing more and more the past few years is that hard to come by manuals on older equipment seem to be disappearing from the internet as "FREE" more and more often...so, DO this while you CAN!

What I BELIEVE is happening is that particular older classic electronic equipment which is being regularly grabbed up on eBay and CL and such is being monitored by the corporate entities involved, such as maybe even H/K Intl....and what they USE TO provide for FREE is either having a fee attached to getting it, OR they are "renting it out to" other entities who are charging a fee and/or providing hard copies for sale on places like eBay!  Yeah, it SUCKS, but GREED is GREED!  This trend SEEMS to CURRENTLY mostly be for the user/operator manuals, BUT I expect it to happen for all of the manuals...ESPECIALLY the ones which actually INCLUDE the entire electronic schematics for repair and possible COPYING of a piece of "no-longer-available from MFG equipment"! 

More to follow!

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The little H/K 430 was the largest-selling stereo receiver in the world when it was in manufacture, and that in itself would likely ensure the "Fee-chargers" quite a bit of income!  Make sense?  ALSO,  that in itself might give you a HINT of just how great a unit it is!  Remember, it beat out ALL OF ITS COMPETITION WORLD-WIDE in sales!!...such as MARANTZ, for one! 

Not to knock Marantz or anything...but they actually screwed THEMSELVES at the time!  Because after they finally completely "got rid of" Saul B. Marantz, himself (yeah he got shafted by the same company he started!!), it wasn't long before their quality control started to get really crappy, which is to be expected when sales volumes rapidly rise...and that is a shame...because so many people were buying that brand and ended up with lemons by "buying a name"!  It WAS NOT the designs that were the problem (in MOST cases, anyway!), though!  It was LOUSY attention to detail in the QC side of the house!  This went on for a few years, unfortunately, for Marantz-lovers!  It was like a roller coaster when you got one...QC was either up or down...depending on the buyer's luck!  It made no sense whatsoever....I kinda CRINGE when people talk about how great Marantz stuff from that particular period is...because they obviously have no idea what so many of the customers were going thru on repairs and such at the time! 

I was in an " ideal environment" to observe all of this happening  at the time, too!  Because I was originally stationed in Germany, then the entire unit was re-assigned to Italy!...as a young paratrooper...and we were constantly going all over NATO for operations and training and very seldom saw our actual duty station, meaning we were always IN THE FIELD IN ANOTHER COUNTRY...far away from where we actually "lived" as Soldiers!  So, whenever we  actually got back it was PARTY TIME!...and because infantry paratroopers work so hard, they tend to party EXTREMELY hard whenever they get the chance!  We had no entertainment whatsoever except for our personal STEREO SYSTEMS, and those got LOTS OF BIG-TIME USE whenever we were "back"!  We didn't make very much money in those days, but we also didn't have much opportunity to spend much of it, EITHER...because we were always in the field elsewhere!  So we blew it whenever we got back on things like "party favors" and our stereo equipment, HONESTLY!  The situation at the time was ideal for us, Stereo-equipment-wise, because we could blow our money on really  great equipment because we were getting it for about HALF-or-even-less of its then-current MSRP!  So when we bought our systems, we just went to the credit union after we had decided what we wanted to get and knew how much the total cost would be...and got a signature loan for purchasing it, with an allotment set up for monthly payment deductions out of our paychecks!  TOO EASY!  So, you can just IMAGINE what all kinds of high-end stuff MOST of us bought, generally-speaking!  But I just waited for making MY OWN equipment purchases...and took more time "paying attention to what was going on around me", instead!  There are equipment USERS, but there are ALSO equipment ABUSERS...and it doesn't take very long in a PARTY HARDY environment to figure out who falls into each of those two categories...so I watched and waited...for almost TWO years...and "worked on my list" before even getting a loan and buying!  And because I did THAT, I ended up getting even better prices, too...for what I eventually purchased throughout 1975...I was very lucky on that!  EVERYTHING I BOUGHT was EITHER being rapidly marked-down regularly to make room for new models, OR was grabbed-up cheap due to an AAFES requirement that the USAREUR Audio-Photo Agency had to meet!...which caused THEM to discount-out inventory of items picked up for sale by AAFES!...so I got my stuff piece-by-piece at even MUCH-LOWER prices!!

 

By the mid-70's lots of really great equipment was disappearing ...due to a number of reasons which were mostly due to consumer-desire causing things like diminishing sales numbers for really great items….For many great receivers and low-powered amps, it was MOSTLY brought about by the "power wars"....people just wanted MORE POWER!...so lots of things which were really great, but low-powered began have their sales numbers dropping and were just dropped from the company-line-ups!  This is what happened to the H/K "X30" twin-powered stereo receiver line!...simply because NONE of them put out 100 wpc or more!  Consumer-desire causes some crazy things to happen! But there was an upside for some consumers...who wanted those items which were being discounted-out to make room for new models....they got them very cheap!

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Here is some advice to everybody:  Whenever somebody highly-praises things...even when a NUMBER of them do so, take it with a "grain of salt"...because they may NOT really know what they are "talking about"!  There are VERY MANY factors to consider when making a decision on equipment purchases, such as "IGNORING ALL THE HYPE", to begin with!...and paying MUCH MORE attention to things like: the warranty, customer service reputation, what tends to be CONTINUALLY requiring repairs (to include what those particular items had been "put thru" by their "Mister Delicate"- USERS/"bull in a china shop"-ABUSERS prior to having a NEED to be repaired!), KNOWN quality-control issues (companies tend to try to HIDE that from you!...but a great general tech-repair person normally doesn't!...because he/she is "FED-UP" with repairing the same crap constantly!...so just ask one or more of the GOOD ones out for a beer after work and FIND OUT what they may not be able to talk about AT WORK!...HINT, HINT!...sometimes you have to be sneaky to get the info you REALLY NEED!), and there are a number of other factors you SHOULD BE considering BESIDES BRAND, HYPE, SPECS and "show-room fever"!

 

SO....remember this...it does NOT matter very much how good something is supposed to be, what ALWAYS matters THE MOST is whether it is at the house or in the repair shop...and how much it ends up costing you to get it back into the house!!

 

When getting ready to purchase things, just do this...to save yourself some grief!

Just make-up a good old Excel spreadsheet list on your computer, kinda like I did by hand on paper way back when!...for each TYPE of equipment you want/need:  turntables, amps/pre-amps/tuners/receivers, speakers...whatever

Then, just put the items that fit together best into each category...based upon brand/model, specs, price, etc...

Then, as you find out MORE ABOUT THEM...and see some of them are "NOT-GONNA-WASTE-MY-HARD-EARNED--MONEY-ON-THIS-ONE" items, just background- hi-light those in RED for (STOP!), and be sure to add-in "WHY" to a notes section on the spreadsheet for each of them, too!

Then, as you continue to check things out...those which remain can be high-lited in yellow, if they are sill good possibilities,...until you have them all hi-lited that way!  Then as you DIG DEEPER into each one of the YELLOW items, you can begin changing the ones which have survived your "deep dig" by just changing the background to GREEN!  ALWAYS PUT IN NOTES ON WHY! 

Now your list is ALMOST finalized...but FIRST.....just separate them all out by background color...having all the green at the top, then the yellow, then the red!..in EACH category!  it saves time for the rest of the decision-making process when using the spreadsheet!

Then run with the green ones!...until your decision is FINAL! Then just make that final decision a DARKER green background with BOLD LETTERING... and put it at the TOP of the green ones!  TOO EASY!!

Now all you need to do is find out where to make the purchase...choose wisely, look for sales...get it inexpensively...TOO EASY!

Not only THAT, but now you have a memory bank available to use to help others keep from screwing themselves!!...so PLEASE SHARE the GENUINE knowledge!

AND ADD MORE TO IT, whenever you "get ready to purchase" something else! 

BUY ONCE, CRY ONCE!...be nice and share!...MOST people appreciate having GENUINE KNOWLEDGE! 

I certainly do!

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Wow! A wealth of information! Thank You!  Got my H/K today. I'll post a pic of the receipt from the audio store that shows what they did to it. Looks like they 'cleaned the pots' cuz it says "cleaned switches & controls". It says they took the amp in cuz it was 'cutting out'. And they 'soldered the suspect connections' to fix it? My daughters stopping by tomorrow to help me carry the speakers upstairs & I'll hook it up! Need to get some speaker wire also...   Thank You!   Bill

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