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Re: Disastro Totale: McIntosh to replace ARC?

If I were you, I would do the following:

1) Open up both amp and preamp and clean all contacts switches and controls. "Caig Deoxit" contact cleaner works well for me. I would imagine you can mail order it for under $20. If you have not done this before you can search or ask for more expert opinion than mine on Vintage asylum. While the amps were open, I would look for obvious visible problems like capacitors that have leaked or disintegrated, and overheated sections of the circuit boards. You should easily be able to do the work in an evening but if it is outside your comfort zone, any competent technician in a nearby town should be able to do it for you. It is amazing how much this simple cleaning can improve sound quality.

2) I would buy copies of the service manuals as these will be very helpful to anyone doing any more than the basic stuff above. One low cost source is "vintageaudiomanuals". They are not good at responding to direct emails but advertise a lot on ebay as "techman777". If they haven't got what you want on ebay, then buy anything else they are selling there. They will respond as soon as you win the auction and you can then add what you really want to the order.

3) I would check the amps internal adjustments based on what was in the service manual. Again, if they have the manual, any competent tech should be able to do this and replace any faulty minor components for you at fairly low cost.

4) I would post on Planar Asyslum asking specifically for recommendations on amps to drive the Quad 63's. Great speakers but an awkward load and it will help to hear from others who have tried different amplifiers with them. The 57's can certainly sound good on very inexpensive vintage amps and I would imagine that the 63's are the same. They may also be able to comment on the Mac. It might also be worth emailing TNT. They at least can talk to you in Italian!

Once you have done these things you won't have spent much and you will be in a good position to decide whether to keep the Macs or change to something else. If you decide to change, then you will get far more selling the Macs as fully functional and complete with service manuals than you would with scratchy controls and possible other problems.

David.


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  • Re: Disastro Totale: McIntosh to replace ARC? - energyandair 01/28/0521:57:11 01/28/05 (0)


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