McIntosh

Walk past a McIntosh amplifier while music is playing and you already know the brand: the black faceplate, the illuminated logo, and the blue watt meters that have been swinging in time since the 1960s. The meters are the most famous object in American audio, and they read real output, on an instrument whose engineering has carried the company for three-quarters of a century.

That engineering began in 1949, when Frank McIntosh and Gordon Gow patented the Unity Coupled Circuit; it is still inside the MC275 today. The company has never left Binghamton, New York; amplifiers are designed and handcrafted in the factory it opened in 1956, circuit boards are tested individually before assembly, and temperature-sensitive components are still soldered by hand. Protection is engineered to be invisible: Power Guard compares input and output waveforms in real time to stop clipping before it happens, and Sentry Monitor cuts the output stage before current exceeds safe limits, then resets itself — no fuses, nothing for the owner to think about.

The résumé is the stuff of legend. McIntosh powered Woodstock in 1969, and five years later forty-eight MC2300s drove the Grateful Dead's Wall of Sound. Today the range runs wider than any other American high-end marque: solid state, vacuum tube, and Hybrid Drive amplification, preamplifiers, streamers and disc players, precision turntables, loudspeakers, and home theater — a complete system, in one unmistakable voice.

Absoulute is a proud authorized McIntosh dealer. The full range is below — contact us to arrange a listening session.