Amplifier for Tannoy Turnberry GR

I have heard the Topaz, although not with any Tannoy speakers, and it is a very good amp. The Kensington I heard were fairly easy to drive; they worked well with amps that were rated at 15 watts to about 50 watts that I heard coupled to the speaker. Based on what I heard with the Kensington, I would look for something with a that would not be excessively hard or brittle sounding at the higher end of the midrange. That means I would pay attention to how it works with solid state and some of the higher-powered tube gear that have a tendency to sound "hard" in the same range.

I have heard the MC275 on efficient speakers not too long ago and the particular setup sounded terrible--muddled and lifeless. A short while later I saw an episode of "How it is Made" that featured the construction of the amp, and frankly it was shocking. I would never buy anything built like this. All of the input connections and the connections to the speaker terminals are made by a press-fit printed circuit board, meaning that even the output to the speakers is being carried by a mere board traces, and no connections are soldered. The winding of the output transformers was done on a machine that appears to do four or five transformers in a matter of seconds--so much for the handwound, interleaved, and carefully insulated transformers that made McIntosh amps something special.

Hi Charles1dad,

My recent negative experience with the sound of both the 275 and a big solid state McIntosh amp can be the result of an indifferent setup. I heard them at a non-McIntosh dealer that has take stuff in trade for other gear and so they amps were inserted into a system without much of an attempt to optimize the setup. Still, a lot of other amps have been dropped into this system with quite good results, so I remain wary of the sound of McIntosh gear (I have not liked the sound of their gear at CES and other shows too).

The "How it is Made" video, I think, speaks for itself. It is, to me, particularly cynical to allow the filming as a means of promoting the product when what is shown is really disappointing to anyone with even modest understanding of gear. It goes to show that they primarily market their gear to those who have no idea about quality gear. Just take a look for yourself, I know that you are knowledgeable about tube gear:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HgS6gvokEI

McIntosh was known for its output transformers which had interleaved windings and insulation between each layer of winding, this was NOT something that could be spun like a top and wound in seconds, as shown in the video. Slow hand winding is also done to prevent excessive stress on the wire in the winding process.

The printed circuit board on the back panel that is used to make the connections to the input jacks and the speaker terminals is not the way to go to make good connections; I would want connections to be wired and soldered.

I agree that, in the solid state camp, First Watt amps would be pretty good. They really do not sound like good tube amps (they still have a smidge of an artificial sounding initial attack to the note), but they are very dynamic and lively sounding at lower volume (where most solid state sounds lifeless), and do not sound harmonically thinned out like most solid state stuff. I am not a fan of Pass gear, but, the two First Watt amps I heard sounded quite good. I had a friend's amp in my system for two weeks and I liked it a lot. Unfortunately, they are not cheap enough to be considered for a temporary solid state fill in. Perhaps a Bel Canto class D amp would make a good temporary amp. I have heard their entry level amp on Harbeth and ProAc speakers and it sounds decent.