I blew it!

I did it, oh man, I bought the pre-amp that I have been looking for.  Not specifically this one, but close.  I have wanted this brand of equipment for years and years and now I have found an affordable (reasonably and relatively inexpensive) McIntosh Preamplifier.  I am currently running a Yamaha C-70 Preamp, which is AWESOME and will see duty in my office system.  It has been acting up, so I may take the opportunity to get it over to my good friends’ house and clean it up a bit and replace some of the inner electronics. 


So I was on EBay and did a search for McIntosh C and chose newly listed, I see this beauty, and it’s within my price range.  It is not perfect, it seems to have a crack on the glass and a little bit of the paper inner label material seems to be peeling away.  I will see what it will cost to get it re-done once it becomes noticeable, or if I have other work done to it.  I am going to check with my friend and see if he recommends that this unit be sent out before I even hook it up to ensure it is working properly.  I currently have a MC250 Stereo Amplifier, and found out that I just happened to purchase its’ matching pre-amp, the McIntosh C-28 Preamplifier.  They were in production at the same time.  There are two solid state amps they made at that time, one had meters, and it is the MC2105, a very cool looking amplifier!   The other is the MC250, which doesn’t even have a power switch!  It has no meters, no lights, only two RCA inputs, two special inputs, the speaker terminals and two volume controls.



The C-28 has lots of goodies that I cannot wait to play with.  It has two phono inputs, and I will need both, it has dual tape inputs, an aux input and a tuner input.  I will be able to use this unit and have a few inputs and outputs available for expansion.  It has tone controls for each individual channel which allows for sound balancing the speakers.  The volume works independent of all tone and balance controls and just equally increases or decreases the volume the same in both channels at the same time.  It has a few equalization features, but I mostly listen to music flat.  I will have a closer look when using the C-28, but I think I am losing the ability to record from one source while listening to another.  That is a feature that I love that the Yamaha C-70 has.  Other than that, I expect it to be a very nice addition to my stereo collection.
Why did I upgrade?  Well the C-70 has acted up a bit and has me questioning its reliability lately.  So I have been watching eBay while warming up and babying the Yamaha.  I ran into this at totally the wrong time, and I had to scrape together the funds from various sources to make it work.  I can’t wait for it to arrive.  I will be chatting with my friend this weekend and will seek his advice.  Watch for postings regarding the C-28.

Keep listening,
Jeff

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