This has been quite an eventful week (and weekend!). Yesterday the the restored vintage mint+ McIntosh MX110Z tuner-preamplifier that I purchased from vintage vacuum-tube specialists Tom Manley & Terry DeWick in Knoxville, Tennessee, arrived.
The MX110Z was in pristine condition (mint+ actually) and needed hardly any restoration, with only a few internal components needing to be replaced. After a tune-up at the hands of Tom & Terry the MX110Z was ready to go! The MX110Z is as all-original as they get, right down to the original manual that was included (just like with my MC240 amp that I bought from Tom).
I had first thought I was going to need to run a step-up transformer with the MX110Z, but it turns out that there's enough gain in the the MX110Z and the MC30/MC240 amps that its not really necessary.
I've been listening to a lot of vinyl today, and I have to say now that the phono stage in the MX110Z has had time to warm up for a day its really strutting its stuff and sounding really, really, good. Shelly Manne, Bill Evans, Dave Brubeck, and Richard Wagner were all incredibly satisfying through the MX110Z!
The MX110Z is not as preternaturally quiet as the superb NVO phono stages, but it still really delivers the musical experience in spades!
Another thing the MX110Z delivers is remarkably good sounding FM radio. My local Northwest Public Radio station sounds ridiculously good through the MX110z's tuner section, and I've had it playing when I haven't been listening to LPs. To say it has been a treat would be a massive understatement! (the photo below is from a few minutes ago in my dark listening room with the tuner engaged)
The MX110Z has definitely won me over - its a keeper! Today I've been listening to it with the McIntosh MC30 monos, but this coming weekend will be a vintage weekend and we'll try it with the MC240 too and see what happens! (magic I suspect!) Many thanks to my buddies Ron & Leo for getting me going in a vintage direction - you guys rock!
In the photo above you can see the external Duelund crossovers for my Westminster Royal SEs. I've been writing my bum off this weekend on the article about the Duelund-Westminster project, that is scheduled to appear in the next issue of Positive Feedback Online (as well as reproduced here after publication in a logical presentation of the different parts of the project from the article). I hope you enjoyed the Introduction (Part 1) that I posted yesterday. Here's a couple more photos from the review:
That's part of the high-frequency crossover above ... and below is a nice view of the low-frequency side of the Duelund crossover in the bottom half of the photo.
Bird's eye view of the perpendicular L2 Duelund CAST inductor ... and the Duelund CAST resistors just in front of it - beautiful components!
Ok, its time to get back to writing on the Duelund article, and listening to a little music through the West's ...
In the next few days I'll have three new LPs to tell you about that I think you'll like ... and here's a final Mac photo for you to enjoy!
Thanks for stopping by, and from my home to yours, may the music playing make you happy!
