tubegroover---I didn’t make my point very well. The McIntosh tube electronics of the 50’s and 60’s were unquestionably among the best available at the time, and found in true audiophile systems. And Frank and Gordon were creative, inventive, excellent design engineers. But they were also conservative, putting reliability above all else (as does Roger Modjeski of Music Reference now)---not a bad thing! Sound quality was important, but was not the MOST important consideration in their designs. Long, trouble-free operation was, glamorous aesthetics (the Mac backlit faceplate is still my favorite look in Hi-Fi) being very important as well. They designed McIntosh products to appeal to, as I have said before, the "Carriage Trade" (an old term)---Professionals who wanted "the best". The readers of Playboy, say. Amongst hardcore audiophiles, however, Marantz tube electronics were more respected and lusted after. When Bill Johnson introduced his Audio Research SP-2 pre-amp and Dual 50 and 100 amps in 1970, they replaced Marantz 7’s, 8’s, and 9’s in audiophile systems, not Macs. Then there were the small companies making extremely high-performance products for fanatics, like Futterman. Trouble free operation was obviously not a high priority for Julius! The absolute best sound possible was, damn everything else. A degree of reliability would be gladly sacrificed to eek the last iota of SQ out of a design.
When they switched to solid state, McIntosh’s standing in the audiophile community dropped drastically. That’s when McIntosh really became about well built "lifestyle" products, not high-performance Hi-Fi.
