Home Tubes Asylum

Questions about tubes and gear that glows. FAQ

Re: Chinese Svetlana's in new McIntosh C2200 preamp???

Hello tube MAC fans. Ron Cornelius from McIntosh here. We source the 12at7a and 12ax7a from a distributor in Europe. This distributor tests all of the tubes and lables them McIntosh and leaves the original country of origin on the tube. We have uses both Russian and Chinese tubes in the C2200. After the C2200 is built it is run through a bank of tests and must meet all specs before it is boxed up for shipment. Yes, we do find unacceptable tubes and reject them. This has alays been the case since day one and yes we used to reject Telefunkens as well as GEC KT88s, etc. back in the 50s and 60s.
The issue of Chinese or Russian has nothing to do with price. They are both inexpensive. Supply is an issue at times however.
The C2200 was released to the Asian market in November. The intial response to the C2200 has exceeded our projections. At this point hundreds of consumers have embraced the C2200. Our main concern with the C2200 is that performs as advertised and is reliable.
The C2200 was not designed to be a place keeper in the tube Mac catagory. We designed the C2200 to be the best possible pre amp we could build and it represents over two years of research and design work by many of our top senior engineers. In actual operation the C2200 is 10 to over 20 dB quieter than our past C22, original or commemorative, depending on volume setting. This is not just a great sounding tube pre amp. The C2200 will be compared to the best tube AND solid state pre amps.
We are constantly researching and testing the current tube stocks available. The C2200 uses 4-12ax7a and 4-12at7a tubes. This is eight tubes total, four in the phono section and four in the pre amp gain section. The new, original, and creative design of the C2200 has raised the bar, so to speak, in tube pre amp performance. By the way if the phono input is not used this input may be renamed to Aux, Tape, etc., and the heaters will be turned off on the phono tube section.
Being a tube fan myself I understand that many of you may prefer some NOS tubes from the past. You can of course use say 5791 black plate RCAs or GE five star or Telefunken tubes to change the sound of the C2200. This is the owner's choice. To continue tube unit production we must use the current stocks made in the quantities we need. Let the tube rolling begin.
As far as the above complaints on our service, well there are two sides to every story. A month to get a tube? Maybe the dealer did not order it? We have them in stock. As far as waiting a month for a replacement unit, yes we build them once a month as the rest of the month is used to build up the parts, chassis, faceplate, boards, etc. We do build our product in house. We do work from raw materials to finished product.
We hope everyone will enjoy the C2200 and $4500 is a lot of money. At McIntosh we feel music is important. The C2200 was not built to a price point, it was built to perform.
Thank you,
Ron-C



This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:
  Schiit Audio  


Follow Ups Full Thread
Follow Ups
  • Re: Chinese Svetlana's in new McIntosh C2200 preamp??? - Ron-C 03/14/0218:20:21 03/14/02 (0)


You can not post to an archived thread.