mcintosh home theater pre-amp tuners.

McIntosh MX132, MX121, MX122 aren't that good for two-channel listening to music. You will have to step up to its top of line HT preamp processor such as the MX160, MX151, MX150 to achieve great quality stereo listening to music to match with your MC602 amp. Since you aren't doing HT if I were you I would get a good quality stereo preamp. McIntosh makes good stereo preamp. 

McIntosh MX132, MX121, MX122 aren't that good for two-channel listening to music. You will have to step up to its top of line HT preamp processor such as the MX160, MX151, MX150 to achieve great quality stereo listening to music to match with your MC602 amp. Since you aren't doing HT if I were you I would get a good quality stereo preamp. McIntosh makes good stereo preamp. 

only reason i bought the mx 132 is because i don't have funds for a separate pre-amp and tuner. being retired and on a fixed income does'nt help any.

For the price you paid, you did just fine. The only way you would improve your preamp would be to spend a lot more money on a 2 channel unit. The problem with 2 channel preamps now is a lot of people buy a new one to keep up with the DACs codecs because they also use the preamp as a DAC. If you are just running 2 channel analog with your MX132 the preamp bypasses all the processing circuits. 

i am not an audiofile. i'm 65 and bought my first system back in the 4 chanell days which i used all the time from then till 1990 then i took a 10 years vacation from my equipment. in 2000  i did buy a 2205 amp till 2011. then my son gave me his 602 which he bought from audio classics. at that time i used my marantz 4300 as a pre amp tuner. it was always noisy so that's when i bought the mx132. i only use my stereo only once a week. so i'm not really an audiofile!