Frank McIntosh and Gordon Gow patented the Unity Coupled Circuit in 1949 and built a company on it. Seventy-five years later McIntosh is still in Binghamton, New York, in the factory it built in 1956, and the MC275 still uses the circuit they invented. Very few companies in any industry can say that the thing they started with is still the thing they sell.
Some of the engineering has become so familiar it is easy to forget it is unusual. Power Guard watches the input and output waveforms continuously and adjusts the input to keep the amplifier from clipping. Sentry Monitor cuts the output stage before current passes safe limits, without fuses, and resets itself. These are protection and delivery systems designed so the owner never has to think about either.
Then there are the meters. Illuminated faceplates and blue watt meters date to the 1960s and have become one of the most recognisable objects in audio. They are also, still, meters — they tell you what the amplifier is doing.
The history is worth knowing: McIntosh amplifiers powered Woodstock in 1969, and in 1974 forty-eight MC2300s drove the Grateful Dead's Wall of Sound. The current range covers almost everything — solid state, vacuum tube, and Hybrid Drive amplification, preamplifiers, turntables, disc players, streamers, loudspeakers, and home theater. Circuit boards are tested individually before assembly, and a good deal of the soldering on temperature-sensitive components is still done by hand.
McIntosh amplification is also a natural partner for the loudspeakers we carry — Sonus faber above all, a pairing with a devoted following around the world. Arrange a demonstration, bring the record you judge systems by, and watch the meters do their job.
