Grateful Dead Music Forum

First, I rarely do this sort of PSA post -- and for all I know, I am totally screwing up someone's sleeper purchase with this -- but to the right person the above title means a lot.

Someone in Cincinnati (or that area) is selling a PAIR of I.T. Verdin company "Bell Ringers of America" carillon amplifiers. These amps are very rare, and are basically McIntosh MC100 amps in an enclosed, wall mountable housing:



Link

I bought an MC100 a few years ago, and did as much research as I could into the MC100 before hand. In the process of researching that amp I learned of these amps with nearly identical internals, which McIntosh made for the I.T. Verdin company, who sold them to churches and schools as institutional amplifiers. If the MC100 is among the rarest of McIntosh amplifiers -- something like 369 made in total? -- these are similarly rare. And this guy is selling a pair of them.

The one other thing I can add/remember from my earlier search is that I think these amps had a slightly different frequency response from the factory -- maybe 100hz to 20k hz, vs 20hz to 20k hz? If these are similar to the ones I read about, they are essentially 100 watt mono amps, the big brother to the MC50.

I never deleted my ebay feed for this search, as this showed up in my in box today. I am in no position to buy them, as I already have too many amps, and the seller is in Cincinnati and looking for a local sale only. But this could be a great find to the right Deadhead.

Not affiliated with the seller in any way, just passing on some interesting info.

Cheers,
REJ

First off they are non working and second they are 16 ohm tapped only. Thank you for posting ! I saw these just yesterday on there and its really wild how ' we ' are often
on the same page ! ~Joe

> First off they are non working

I really have no dog in this fight, but for the sake of completeness the seller's actual auction description reads, "Untested condition. I have no idea of the working condition of either amplifier. I have never attempted to plug these in. Expect these to not work as they should. These do not even have power cords you must hook wires up to the proper screw terminals."

So they might work, or they might not work; the seller doesn't know, is selling them AS IS, and potential buyers should lower their expectations.

Oddly, in looking for the re-listing of the auction I listed in my OP, I found another I.T. Verdin/McIntosh P237 amp listed on ebay, in better condition and with plenty of clear pictures showing the speaker and power terminal strip, markings, etc. :

http://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/711-53200 ... =824&kw=lg

This seller appears to be a different person, and will ship. Bonus: the second amp comes with what appears to be a simple-but-rare McIntosh preamp. Caveat: He wants more money for his, but he's the second owner and his does appear to work

And yes, Verdin/McIntosh amps appear to only have 16 ohms outputs.

redeyedjim wrote: These do not even have power cords you must hook wires up to the proper screw terminals."

WOW, I'm sure glad that concept went out of style. Can you imagine? Terminals 5, 6 ,and 7 are for the ground and the two power wires. One slip with the screwdriver when hooking up your speakers and ZZZZZZTTTTT

There'd only be about half of us left around here!

I called and discussed it with him. He's pretty damn sure they need to be repaired. There had been a whole slew (no pun intended) of these for sale a while back and these two were some of the last few that nobody wanted to buy. Nice score tho on the other one wow. They do show up here n there. I'm about to grab a difft one. Not sure if I'll like it that much as I've heard 16ohm units might be a bit "open" sounding. On my macs I've always liked running lower impedence taps for the extra struggle and dampening you get. 16 ohm tap into 8 gives you sustain tho...very cool if thats what you are after. So they prob have " Bell like tone" haha. I cant remember the model but the faceplate rings a bell. It can ring like fire when you lose your way!! ~Joe

oldsmojo wrote: Not sure if I'll like it that much as I've heard 16ohm units might be a bit "open" sounding. On my macs I've always liked running lower impedence taps for the extra struggle and dampening you get. 16 ohm tap into 8 gives you sustain tho...very cool if thats what you are after. So they prob have " Bell like tone" haha.~Joe

From the MC50 manual:

"The use of the McIntosh designed trifilar autoformer makes the McIntosh solid state amplifiers the only amplifiers that deliver FULL POWER AT ALL SPEAKER IMPEDANCES. You have not been power penalized for your choice of loudspeakers when using the McIntosh MC50."