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The Grateful Dead's Amp of Choice. The Mcintosh MC2300


Shiva

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If anyone is interested in the La Scala speakers they showed briefly in the video they were purchased by Jerry Garcia's mother as the bands first PA system in 66'/67'. Jerry later gave them to the Hell's Angels for their clubhouse system complete with a Sansui amplifier. Pretty darn neat right!

 

https://insheepsclothinghifi.com/grateful-dead-hi-fi-auction/

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1 hour ago, captainbeefheart said:

If anyone is interested in the La Scala speakers they showed briefly in the video they were purchased by Jerry Garcia's mother as the bands first PA system in 66'/67'. Jerry later gave them to the Hell's Angels for their clubhouse system complete with a Sansui amplifier. Pretty darn neat right!

 

https://insheepsclothinghifi.com/grateful-dead-hi-fi-auction/

Very cool Sotheby's was able to put together enough provenance to piece this one together. They have the resources, but who knew they had the real thing. Until now. 

 

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From Wikipedia The improvisational rock band the Grateful Dead employed 48 McIntosh MC-2300 amps as the main power source for their enormous public-address system, the Wall of Sound. Designed by Owsley "Bear" Stanley and others, this system utilized more than 26,000 watts of continuous power fed into JBL and Electrovoice speakers and was renowned for its natural, low-distortion stereo sound which carried for 600 feet without significant degradation.

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Kid Charlemagne definitely knew something about good sound combos. I use newer McIntosh (MX151/MC255) to drive my all-Cornwall theater (one might call it "The CornWall Of Sound") and it still "has it" - that body, presentation, "way" with the performance, albeit with a little fresher face. I spent a ton of time with MC30s as well as MC250 on various Klipsch and still believe that the Mac/horn combo is one of the best in the biz. It's not practical to use tubes or Firstwatt (class A too hot anyway), Luxman and Accuphase don't make five channel amps. When I rebuilt my Cornwall Theater and had to choose how to power that, the Mac seemed a good logical fit, and it still is.

 

From the Grateful Dead stage to here, and all through the years, they most certainly were not wrong, and I still think of Mac first and foremost as "The Amp Company" because of it.

 

 

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