Mcintosh and magnepans

If you have not read any threads on this topic at the Audio asylum page you should. I have no experience with that combination, but have heard conflicting answers in a few threads at the planar(Magnepan)speaker asylum. http://www.audioasylum.com/forums/MUG/bbs.html

Maybe someone here will fess up their experiences.

By the way which Magnepans do you have? 1.6QR, 3.6R, 20.1R? The higher you go up the line the more concern I'd be selecting the right amp.

Good luck

Hi Shaman. Mac and Maggies. I had a Mac 2300 amp, Mac pre-amp and tuner. They are a magical combo. It could be the Mac autotransformer that makes this combo sound so well. Very life like, dynamic and great goosebump sound. I had the 2C Maggies at the time. This was back in the 80's. I also have found that Maggies sound thier very best with solid core wire. I went to Home Depoe and brought some heavy duty electrical wire. It was so thick that it filled the Maggie input for the speaker wire. A fab sound. Try it, you'll like it. Have told 5 other Maggie owners and everybody agreed that the thick solid core wire was the way to go. I hope this helps. Kittyhawk

Hi Shaman, Here is my fess-up story!
I was using tube amps with dynamic speakes, and as a prevoius Maggie owner of 1.5's, and 2.7's...I deceided to go back to Maggies and swapped out my Thiels with another member for a nice pair of MG 3.3's. Then it was time to find a suitable amp to drive them properly. As my Dad has always been a Mac owner since the early days of Audio, I deceided for ha-ha's to borrow his vintage MC 2105(105 W/Ch.) for a time. I was not expecting much...but, I was very pleasantly suprised how well the Maggies sounded, and deceided to look into running a bigger Mac amp with them. Like you, I searched Agon threads, AA threads and found many pro and con opinions. I gave a call to Audio Classics in upstate NY, who are a big Mac dealer of new and old vintage McIntosh equip, and deceided to ask their opinion on running my 3.3's with Mac amps. Mike has a lot of personal and professional experience as he also owns Maggie 3.6's. Basically, he advise me to be carefull( read: DONT) with using the older macs such as the 2105,2205,7100 series and even the 2300,2500,2600. He thought the autoformers were not a good output match for the low impedence of the Maggies. When I mentioned to them that my borrowed 2105 sounded really good in my medium size room, he was suprised, as his personal experience was not favorable to his 3.6's( He did have a much bigger room than I) I utimately purchased(against his advice) a MC7270 with 270W/Ch.thinking it would be plenty of power, BUT... found this amp to be perhaps the worst sounding amp or the worst possible match( not sure since I only ran the 3.3's with it). Lifeless and bright sounding with the 3.3's In retrospect, I think perhaps the older (60's power amps like the 2300 would probably match up better than the later 70's amps which many feel do not. As Kittyhawk has found to be the case.The newer MC series ARE a good match from all Iv'e read and heard about. They are quite good sounding and very capable amps for todays lower impedence speakers like the Maggies.( more consistant sounding than the older amps which were hit and miss) Like Kittyhawk, Iv'e read solid core wire is the way to go with Maggies, or they can tend to upper midrange brightness with some assoc. equip. but have no personal exp. with solid core with them. A Mac 2600 Stereo amp with 600 per channel and 100 amp peak current will do the trick or If you can swing( or find) the MC1000 Monoblocks ( 1000W/Ch and 160A peak!! Have fun!