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The amplifier is the muscle behind a home-audio system. Whether it’s powered by vacuum tubes or transistors, the amplifier takes signals from components such as tuners and turntables and pushes them out to speakers and, ultimately, your ears....
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The amplifier is the muscle behind a home-audio system. Whether it’s powered by vacuum tubes or transistors, the amplifier takes signals from components such as tuners and turntables and pushes them out to speakers and, ultimately, your ears. Some of the most revered names in vintage amplifiers include Pioneer, Marantz, Fisher, Nakamichi, and Phase Linear. For many music fans and classic-audio-gear aficionados, the word “McIntosh” is pretty much synonymous with the word “amplifier.” Shipping their first amplifier, the 50W1, in 1949, Frank McIntosh and Gordon Gow set the nascent audiophile world on its ear with their Unity Coupled transformer, which radically reduced distortion compared to competing tube amplifiers of the postwar era. In 1967, McIntosh Laboratory Inc., as the company was called in those days, introduced its first stand-alone, solid-state amplifier, the MC2505. With 50 watts of power per channel, the MC2505 was not the most powerful amplifier McIntosh had ever designed and assembled, but its blue power-level meters and solid black-glass front panel set a standard for both the appearance and sound of high-end audio components. Although McIntosh amplifiers were designed primarily for home use, some models were made for music professionals, such as the MI350, which was a mono tube amplifier that gained fame in August of 1969 when at least 10 of these beasts were used to power the speakers at Woodstock. Five years later, in 1974, the Grateful Dead would hook up 48 McIntosh 2300s to produce a staggering 28,800 watts of power for the band’s famous Wall of Sound.

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