2. amps-preamps
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How do we remember 1970s amplifiers?

I would be curious to hear some of the memories and impressions associated with the following short list of 1970s amplifiers:

- McIntosh "first generation" SS amps, MC2105, MC2505, MC2300, MC250, MC2100
- Dynaco Stereo 400 and Stereo 120
- Phase Linear 400 and 700
- Bang & Olufsen "slide rule" receivers (i.e. especially blackface Beomaster 4000)
- Original Ampzilla (not Son of Ampzilla)

I've chosen this list mainly because they cover a wide range of approaches to solving the issues of early semiconductor technology, and they were all pretty mainstream products in the U.S. I'm excluding the Japanese receivers/amps not out of predjudice; it's simply that the circuit designs varied quite a bit with each model, and thus harder to broadly classify their characteristics.

I'm interested in impressions of both sonic and non-sonic attributes, and a preferred ranking of the above, if you like.
kirkus

Showing 1 response by dividebytube

dividebytube
50 posts
 
I've owned the MC250 - the industrial looking 50WPC amplifier. It uses autoformers and actually sounds fairly tubey. Good bass, a little muddy in the mids, and a not very detailed treble. It had a bit of a grainy smear to the sound - at least with the speakers I had at the time. But still, it was a very enjoyable and musical amplifier, just not very high-end.

I've also used a (rebuilt) Dynaco ST-80. Like the ST-120, it's actually capacitor-coupled to the speaker, so some of the faults could be attributed to the bad electrolytics of the time. The only I rebuilt had modern caps and sounded half-decent. Certainly not world-class, but a nice little dorm amp or something for a second system. Again, it just had a slight grain and a slightly forward/etchy treble.
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