I recently rekindled an old interest in vacuum tube hi-fi equipment from the 1960's. In the closet of my old bedroom at my parents' house in Albuquerque, I found an Eico HF-89 power amplifier and an HF-85 preamp I'd purchased long ago. I was happily surprised when I powered them up (very slowly with a variable transformer), hooked up a CD player and speakers, and heard Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor come bursting forth. The amps hadn't been played for about 25 years. I found an Eico HF-90 FM tuner on Ebay and now have a complete system (minus a turntable -- I haven't developed an interest in vinyl).

This electronic success inspired me to track down an example of an old tube amp I'd admired as a college student, a McIntosh. I bought an MC-240 power amp here in Santa Fe and a McIntosh MX-110 FM tuner and preamp on Ebay. Played through a pair of vintage Klipsch Heresy speakers, the system sounds magnificent.

An excellent resource for people interested in this pastime is the newsgroup rec.audio.tubes. If you are specifically interested in Eico, see this unofficial home page. For McIntosh see Roger Russell's site.

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