McIntosh at Pearl Audio, 2005 to now

Pearl Audio has been a McIntosh dealer since 2005. Twenty years later McIntosh is still the first thing most people see when they walk in: a wall of black glass, green lettering and blue meters. More of our customers choose McIntosh than any other brand we carry, and we are the longest-running McIntosh dealer in the Northwest. This is our account of why, beginning with how it started for John.

A stack of tuners

John Loranger

My first McIntosh was an MR71, a tube tuner from the 1960s. I loved the sound of tubes. My system at the time had a tube preamplifier and tube amplifiers, and I listened to a great deal of FM, through a mid-market tuner that I could tell was holding everything else back. So I asked around, and the answer I kept hearing was that the MR71 was one of the finest tube tuners ever made.

I found one here in Portland. The seller was the original owner, and we walked down to his basement, where it sat in a vintage system he had owned for many years. It had not been serviced in a long time, so before I ever took it home I took it to my tube technician, who cleaned it, replaced components and fitted new tubes. Then I plugged it in, and I absolutely loved it. It had a glorious tube sound.

That should have been the end of it. But I had started reading about McIntosh, and what I read was that the MR78 was the greatest tuner the company had ever built. I found the nicest one I could, and it was superb: no tube output, but it could pull in distant stations and separate crowded ones like nothing I had heard. My technician went through that one as well. Over the next few months an MR80, an MR67 and an MR73 followed it home, and I had a whole stack of McIntosh tuners in my living room. That was the beginning.

The first week

Several years later I was a hi-fi dealer, and I signed the paperwork with McIntosh and placed my first order. It arrived a few weeks later, and my name went up on the McIntosh dealer locator.

Then the phone rang. A gentleman wanted to hear some McIntosh, and we made an appointment. When he walked in, his brother walked in behind him, and his brother turned out to be a friend I had known for years.

I played him a McIntosh tube preamplifier and a pair of solid-state monoblocks, through the best loudspeakers in the store. He took the system home. It was the largest system I had ever put together for anyone, and I had been a McIntosh dealer, with equipment on the floor, for about a week. After he left I just stood there.

He has been my customer for more than twenty years now. He has been through two rounds of upgrades, each time moving to the newer version of the same preamplifier and the same amplifiers, so it is still recognizably the system he chose that day. Along the way he chose a new pair of loudspeakers. And he is still a friend.

My own system

Not long after that I chose a McIntosh system of my own: a C2200 tube preamplifier and a pair of MC275 amplifiers, each one run as a monoblock.

I loved the sound of the 275. Used that way it was powerful and authoritative, and it had a gorgeous tone: burnished, almost vintage, and yet with tremendous clarity. There was an emotional quality to it that made music sound more alive to me.

Over the years I moved from the C2200 to the C2300, and later to the C2500. The amplifiers never changed.

That is what I think of when people ask me about McIntosh. You do not start over. You keep what you love, you bring the rest up to date when you are ready, and twenty years later it is still your system.

A company you can still visit

McIntosh Laboratory was founded in 1949 by Frank McIntosh, a radio engineer, and Gordon Gow, the young engineer he had hired to help build an amplifier that did not yet exist: one that could deliver real power across the whole audible range with almost no distortion. Their answer, the Unity Coupled Circuit, was patented that year and went into the company’s first product, the 50W-1.

In 1951 the company moved to Binghamton, New York. The factory at 2 Chambers Street opened in 1956, and McIntosh has never left it. The transformers are still wound there by hand. The glass front panels are still cut and printed in the building. Every amplifier is still tested on the bench before it is boxed. Ownership has changed several times over the decades. The address, and the way the equipment is made, have not.

Five ideas that have not changed

Most of what makes a McIntosh a McIntosh was settled by the late 1970s, and you can see all of it at work on an amplifier made this year.

The output transformer. In 1967, when McIntosh built its first transistor amplifiers, it kept the output transformer that everyone else was abandoning and called it the Autoformer. It is the reason a McIntosh amplifier delivers its full rated power into a 2, 4 or 8 ohm loudspeaker. In practice it means the amplifier does not care much which loudspeaker you choose, now or in fifteen years.

Power Guard. Introduced in 1977 and fitted to every McIntosh amplifier since. It compares what goes into the amplifier with what comes out, and if the two begin to differ it eases the input back before the amplifier can clip. Clipping is what damages tweeters and what makes loud music turn harsh. With Power Guard you can play at high volume without either.

Sentry Monitor. A protection circuit from the same first transistor amplifiers. If the output is ever shorted, the amplifier shuts its output stage down and resets itself when the fault is gone. There is no fuse to replace.

The blue meters. They are not decoration. They read the power actually being delivered to the loudspeakers, in watts, and they respond quickly enough to follow the music. Most people are surprised by how few watts ordinary listening takes, and how many a drum hit asks for.

The glass panel. A sheet of glass, printed from behind, so the lettering can never wear off. It reads gold in daylight and glows green in a dark room. A panel from the 1960s looks very much like one from this year, which is why a McIntosh system assembled over decades still looks like one system.

What it sounds like

McIntosh has a sound, and reviewers have described it in the same terms for a long time: effortless, smooth and relaxed, with a little warmth and richness. The music arrives on a large scale and stays composed and controlled as the volume rises. It is easy on the ears, which matters more than it sounds like it should. It is the difference between a system you admire for twenty minutes and one you leave on all evening.

History you can hear

McIntosh’s history runs through the music of the last seventy-five years. McIntosh amplifiers powered Woodstock in 1969. In March 1974 the Grateful Dead unveiled the Wall of Sound with 48 McIntosh MC2300 amplifiers behind it, 28,800 watts in all. The MC275 tube amplifier of 1961, the amplifier John chose for himself, is the design collectors chase. Since 1993 it has been back in production, and the one on our floor is the sixth generation of the same idea.

That continuity is the point. McIntosh does not replace its ideas every few years. It refines them, and it keeps older equipment in service: its digital sections are built as modules so that a preamplifier or integrated amplifier can be brought up to date without being replaced.

Where to begin

There is a McIntosh for almost every system, and they share the same character.

• One box. The hybrid integrated amplifiers pair a vacuum-tube preamplifier with a solid-state output stage: the MA252 and MA352, and at the top the MA12000. The MA8950 is the solid-state integrated we set up most often. The MA2375, new in 2026, is the first all-tube McIntosh integrated in more than a decade.
• Separates. A preamplifier, tube (C22, C2800) or solid state (C55), with a power amplifier sized to the room and the loudspeaker: the MC462 stereo amplifier, the MC611 monoblocks, and the 1,200-watt MC1.25KW.
• Tubes. The MC275 with the C2800 tube preamplifier is the classic McIntosh tube system. It is also one you can grow: add a second MC275 later and the pair become monoblocks, which is exactly how John ran his.
• Sources. The MCD600 and MCD12000 SACD/CD players are the digital sources our customers choose most. Alongside them are the DS200 streaming DAC and the MT5 and MT10 turntables.

McIntosh at Pearl Audio

We have represented McIntosh since 2005, and McIntosh has designated Pearl a Platinum dealer since our second year with the brand. Our staff are factory trained, and every one of us has more than 15 years of experience with McIntosh. We hold the largest McIntosh inventory in Oregon, most of it new and sealed in the box, so the piece you choose can usually go home with you the same day. In the Portland area we deliver and install it ourselves.

We also know what it does with the loudspeakers we carry. McIntosh with Sonus faber is a pairing we have been setting up for almost 20 years, and McIntosh with Bowers & Wilkins is a regular in our listening rooms.

Tell us what you listen to and what you own now, and we will set up the McIntosh pieces you are curious about in one of our two listening rooms for your visit. Call (503) 222-2599 or write to sales@pearlaudio.com.

See also: The McIntosh story · McIntosh in Portland