Book Review: McIntosh “...for the love of music...”
By John Paul
April 2009
McIntosh “...for the love of music...” by Ken Kessler
What a delight! Just like the visually stunning McIntosh equipment, there is a big shiny black coffee table book with that classic gold brand McIntosh logo and the iconic, gorgeous, glowing, cool blue power metre staring out from it proud and true.
Inside the book the company’s fifty year plus history, its traditions, and influence are properly told by all its participants to Ken Kessler. Befitting the professional construction and appearance of Mac-hi-fi, KK provides a professional and respectful packaging of stories and anecdotes accurately describing the company’s ups and downs.
Engineering insights (Unity-coupled output transformers, etc.), internal arguments, industry gossip, and superb old and new photos of everyone and everything intimately detail workings of this truly classic American institution.
As KK has often points out in the trade rags, there is considerable effort involved in creating and sustaining a luxury brand market position. So his book explains how “Mac” painfully ended up being owned by a Japanese car radio company. Yet survived that to still make dearly desired goodies for music lovers and hobbyists.
Lessons learned in chapters about product quality versus changing market demands make this required reading for existing hi-fi retailers. Narratives about legal hassles with that “other Mac” company, and associations with the Beatles re-playing that drama are here to demonstrate “Gawd, what next?” occurs as part of just making “nice products”. Of course, all the Beatles individually owned McIntosh gear.
For other lucky owners of McIntosh products there are product tables, timelines, rarities, and re-prints of key personnel interviews, plus equipment reviews from other sources too. Available through McIntosh retailers, (printed in Hong Kong), it is like Kessler’s Quad, the Closest Approach, an absolutely enjoyable treasure in a monumental work of hi-fi journalism.
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