McIntosh

Chips shortages, commodity shortages and logistics capacity shortages are real in my opinion. I am a management consultant and have been very busy helping clients figure out contingency plans.

In regards to McIntosh and their customer service, I've been pleasantly surprised. Over the last year, I have purchased 2 demo units from 2 different dealers and registered them for the warranty. 1 unit was declined and I called the person who sent me the email to better understand why it was declined and from my perspective to find out if the selling dealer lied to me. The woman researched and noticed the selling dealer changed their legal name and she then registered it for the warranty.

My perception is McIntosh has a good brand reputation tries to do the right thing. Note while they are a well known company they are not the volume drivers in many of the things they buy.

Unfortunately supply chains are suffering in every industry.    I repair medical equipment.    Our vendors are in Switzerland,  Germany, Japan, England....pretty much everywhere and they are all experiencing parts delays.   I was supposed to get a part back in November and its ETA has been pushed to June.   Another problem is parts that were readily  available are being saved by the manufacturers for the production line, so spares are severely backordered .    The problem is that  we are just feeling it now because oem warehouse stock is finally depleted after a year of shut downs worldwide.  Manufacturers are not lying when they blame lack of parts and raw materials. 

In March 2021, I walked in and purchased a McIntosh MA352 at Magnolia in Costa Mesa CA right off the shelf.

The next week I ordered the MCD85 CD player from a small local (only McIntosh) vendor HiFI Haven, Whittier CA, since 1957.  The owner placed a call and got one for me in two weeks.  He claims to have a long-standing relationship with NYHQ going back to when his father first became a sole McIntosh dealer.

He confirmed there are delays on some items but says, he can get a number of items within the month ordered.

Maybe I just got lucky.

@mhass How do you like the MB50 as a streamer? Have you tried it as a preamp too? Thanks

I have an MB50…it’s ok, but crippled by the Play-Fi restriction and the bad app