Amplifier for Tannoy Turnberry GR

Pani wrote "...had a McIntosh C275 for demo at home and I
realized that these speakers sound so clean and dynamic
that any amount of power can be consumed unknowingly."

Pani - can you give me your impression on the MC275 you demoed? I stopped into a dealer yesterday and had a chat with a salesman. He suggested that the MC275 would be a great match with my Turnberrys and even offered me a very good deal on a brand new unit. I am very tempted to snap it up. He thought this amp would be a much better match with my speakers vs the MC452.

I have ruled out the Wyetech Onyx but I still have the Wyetech Topaz on the list. The MC275 looks intriguing.

Some time ago I heard Tannoy Prestige line speakers using Octave tube amps. The combo sounded very good. I like Octvae tube amps. Many tube amps sound overly warm or lush Octave doesn't while still giving that tube "magic".

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.

Larryi,
Wow, that is some unexpected insight, that is disappointing . Although the bottom line is how does it sound? Not good based on your recent listening experience. At the very least you can say it is build very differently than the Wyetech amplifier. I hope Mmarshall can hear both amps with his speakers and decide.

No circuit boards :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yodVDiEIpqI