DCHFG Member, Paul Elliott, recently visited Overture AV on the occasion of McIntosh Labs 70th Anniversary celebration. This is a preview of what DCHFG members will see and hear during our visit on July 20, 2019.

A few Saturday’s ago, Overture AV in Wilmington, DE held an open house for McIntosh Labs 70^th birthday. 

The Wilmington store went through a major renovation last year and was warm and inviting, filled with many rooms and an impressive array of systems of all sizes, including two Home Theater rooms. Overture put out an very nice lunch spread of sandwiches, tomato pie, and chips.

Once lunch had settled it was off to visit the rooms.  They had set up two main rooms with alternating demos every thirty minutes.

The “Big” system featured the Sonus faber Aida ($130k) speakers driven by a pair of the big McIntosh-MC1.25KW Monobloc’s.

The slightly more intimate room run by McIntosh rep Ken Zelin had the new McIntosh Anniversary C70 tube preamplifier, MC2152 2-Channel Vacuum Tube Amplifier, and the Sonus faber LILIUM ($70K) speakers.

Chris told me since he joined Overture, the company has spent a lot of energy finding products to bring to the public that makes sense. They have explored the synergy between manufacturers that are additive to the musical experience.

McIntosh actually got their start here in Silver Spring, Maryland in 1949 before moving to Binghamton, NY in 1951.

Who could forget that the Grateful Dead unveiled the “Wall of Sound” on March 23, 1974 at the San Francisco Cow Palace.  A total of 48 McIntosh MC2300 amplifiers – delivering 28,800 Watts of power – were used in this groundbreaking sound system.

McIntosh believes in supporting the customer, providing service for every product they have ever produced.

I asked Ken “What makes McIntosh a McIntosh”.

His response, “Smoothness”, this is the McIntosh sound.  It adds nothing that gets in way of the music. Ken said that most of this McIntosh sound is due to the output transformers.  Very wide bandwidth out to 100khz.

I heard the smoothness. No harsh high frequency nasties. I heard nothing to complain about.