MR 80 Restored!
 

I've had this MR 80 for several years. I bought it from AA member Glen. Last year it started to lose lock, so off it went for restoration. I just got it back from Absolute Sound Labs. Mark Wilson did an outstanding job of restoring it to like new condition. This was a significant undertaking involving consultation with the McIntosh factory team and a retired McIntosh service manager. Mark pulled out a coffee mug full of parts, mostly electrolytic capacitors. He re-lamped it as well, so it should be good for a long time. I highly recommend Mark's work.

It's sounding great now - better than ever.

http://i1115.photobucket.com/albums/...ps7lcbrou5.jpg

Tom.......She's a beauty. Happy to know it is fully restored. The MR80 is a great sounding tuner.

Thanks Dan. I've owned MR 77, MR 78, and MR 80 and to my ears the MR 80 sounds the best. But is sure isn't as pretty as an MR 78 or one of the other McIntosh analog dial tuners.
Tom

I'll second that opinion, word for word.

The MR80 design was cutting edge design at the time with over 60 integrated circuits for capacitance, touch-sensitive tuning and displaying of the frequency.

I agree, the MR80 is a great sounding tuner, especially when restored. I just finished an extensive restoration and recap on mine and I absolutely love the sound.

Congrats on your MR80!

great jobs looks very nice!

Congrats. Little better than a wonderful tuner.

Thanks guys,
I'm listening to Minnesota Public Radio's classical outlet as I write this. It sounds fantastic. Very natural and open soundstage.
Tom

Beautiful!:thumbsup:

The MR-80 is a terrific tuner. I bought mine new and it still sounds great. They do require periodic service and it sounds like you found a good tech!

I finally wrapped up my MR80 refurb today. The last item was replacing 4 ancient opamps (2x LM201 and 2x LF356) in the audio path with more modern and quiet Burr Brown/TI OPA132's.

The background noise/hiss is now completely gone. There's a few compensation caps that need to be removed to accommodate this swap so PM me if you're interested. This was an awesome upgrade!

Great to know!

While I'm not the Glen that Tom purchased his MR80 from, it is a terrific tuner and, when refurbished, the best of later models from McIntosh, including those offered to this day. Mine was completely gone through by Terry DeWick and now resides down in Kiwi land (NZ).

Well Now. What can I Say.
I sure wish that I could hear it today. It was the best I have heard when I had it.
Nice, Nice, Nice.

Thanks Glen.

It worked great for many years before I had it serviced. When I have more time I will definitely look at upgrading the audio path with more modern op amps. I have re-amped (re-oped?) my MAC 4300V with OPA 2064's and wow did it make a difference.

Tom

Sorry for all the necro bumps lately since I've been gone, but this MR80 looks amazing! It's always nice to see people still caring about this gear. Makes me really want to dig my MR74 out of storage and replace the MR88 for a few months.

Have Terry DeWick go through your MR74 and do a recap & alignment and you will then use your MR88 only for HD radio. The MR74 will be that much better.

My MR74 has been tuned and modified by Richard Modafferi, so it is no slouch. Overall for right now the MR88 works the best for me, it picks up the hard to reach channels far better than the MR74.

Congrats! I owned one for several years many years ago. I wish I could have liked it. I tried very hard. I found the Narrow mode the only audiophile quality mode and through it, the sound was excellent. Super Narrow severely compromised sound quality. However, wandering presets and only 4 with no decent remote or tuning dial limited my enjoyment. The MR 7083 had a similar sound quality and was much user friendlier. The MR 87 represents a genuine advance in Mac tuners IMO. Recently there has been a lot of discussion about the MR 88 and HD but HD is MP3 quality sound. A good FM analog signal is by far better than MP3.

Again, congrats on the beautiful piece. I am sure your experience with your MR 80 is superior to mine. But the sound quality and its beauty were its redeeming qualities.

MR 80 Restored!
 

Charles - forgot about this thread. Thanks for reviving it.

The MR 80 sounds the best out of all of the McIntosh tuners I’ve owned and better than any of the handful of other tuners that have visited my systems over the years.

This MR 80 has been very solid and lives in our Wisconsin lake home 85 miles as the crow flies from Minneapolis. I have a roof mounted 6 element yagi. Works great.

I agree the super narrow is only useful for DX or situations where there is a strong adjacent channel station.

I have not yet done any upgrades or mods to the tuner so I have that to look forward to.

Tom

Tom, this was a period in my audio journey that I made mistakes. One of them was trading my MR 80. I have never been a tuner afficionado especially back in those days but I never liked the MR 7083 and I gave it to my father and went to an MR 85 which I believe cost about 1,800.00 by memory. I kept the MR 85 for a long time but again it was a solid but "nothing special" tuner. Although the MR 80 had frustrating flaws, it is quite unique, very beautiful, and had excellent sound quality.

I believe the MR 87 is everything the MR 80 attempted to be. On a good station their sound quality is comparable but I would definitely go with the MR 87. Also something that is not recognized is that McIntosh has achieved an adjacent channel selectivity almost the equal to the alternated selectivity (60 and 66 db respectively) which is quite remarkable. I live in an area where using the published FM locator that lists every FM station within a 70 mile radius, there is a station on virtually every .2 increments of the dial. The MR 87 pulls in virtually everyone of them and no distortion or noise.

Right now just for fun I am on 88.7 which about 10 miles away. The signal is crystal clear. Above 88.7 is 88.9 which is 65 miles away in Bowling Green KY and above that is 89.1 which is 1 mile away. Below 88.7 is 88.5 which is 24 miles away and below that 88.3 (32 miles) and 88.3 (3 miles college station only 700 watts). All these stations come in crystal clear which is if you know anything about tuners and I know you do, is quite remarkable.

With the MR 87 you can vary the sensitivity to your taste. The noise, multipath, and signal strength are clearly displayed so that if you have a rotary antenna you can optimize the reception. If I were a tuner afficionado I would have a directional rotary antenna and use this feature to optimize reception. The MR 87 allows this by measurement, the MR 80 only measures signal strength. In the days of the MR 80 Mac made a separate piece that allowed you do do this, i.e. thoroughly analyze and optimize your FM reception through your MR 80.

If you look at the respective distances listed above one station is 1 mile, another 3 miles, another 65 miles, i.e strong stations near weak stations and on adjacent channels. That's about the most stringent test for any tuner because strong stations interfere with weak stations that are adjacent. I attribute this remarkable quality to the digital signal processing which I believe represents the first really significant advance to come along in FM tuners. I am unaware of other tuners that do digital signal processing other than the Accuphase T-1200. The MR 87 really delivers the goods when it comes to analog high quality FM. For me, the Super Narrow was so compromised it was a curiosity. The adjacent channel selectivity of 8 db in the Narrow mode would not be sufficient to pull in the above signals without considerable interference, nor would any other vintage tuner (MR 78 or 74, Marantz 10B for examples to name a few). The ability of the MR 87 to have nearly equivalent adjacent and alternate channel selectivity both of which are at least 60 db is remarkable. I am saying this not to put the MR 80 down. It is a great tuner but to point out that if you are looking for a tuner that is everything the MR 80 strove to be, look no further that the MR 87. And it is a truly beautiful piece also.

Charles - That’s very impressive performance out of the MR-87. The MR-80 can’t match that.No way.

I agree that DSP is a technology very well suited to improving FM Stereo reception. There is so much that can be done in the digital domain to reduce noise and adjacent channel interference.

When one of my current tuners bites the dust (I have an MR 77 in Colorado) I think an MR 87 would be a great way to go. Thanks for the real world info. Truly impressive.

Tom

Just read the manual of the MR87, the mpath, noise and signal graphs are all missing from the MR88. We are simply stuck with the 3 bar signal display, which is the only complaint I've had about the tuner.

It's interesting that the MR 87 also has in addition to a noise and multipath display, a variable sensitivity feature and a variable stereo blend feature. In looking at the om for the MR 88, the MR 88 has none of these desirable features. I was under the impression that the MR 87 and 88 were identical except for the additional HD features of the 88. I mention that Mac made a MPI4 that along with the MR 80 allowed one to optimize FM reception similar to the abilities of the MR 87.

I assume it's due to a different chip being used in the 87 vs the 88. If someone doesn't care about HD or XM, the 87 is clearly a superior choice to the 88. I'm just happy Mc is still making tuners!

I’m curious - there are now 3 McIntosh Tuner modules, TM 1, TM 2, and TM 3. Does the MR 87 use any of these modules or is it a stand alone design?

The TM2 includes HD, so that's definitely not used in the 87. The TM1 I believe is similar to the MR85.

I’m just happy that there are folks talking about tuners.

85 used the TM 1
88 used the TM 2
87 uses the ?!


Looking at the back panel of the 87 it’s hard to tell what they are doing. But it sure seems like they have a winner.

Mac was in the design stage for an MR 79 which would have combined the MP14 and the MR 80. It had no presets and had Normal Narrow and Super Narrow options. The design was cancelled and the MR 80 produced which had Narrow and Super Narrow. Narrow was "Normal". The goal to me of FM is to be able to advance up the FM dial in .2 increments as opposed to .4 while at the same time maintaining the all same specs and sound quality. In addition you want to be able to monitor the quality of the signal because the other part to FM is the antenna and the number of stations in your area. It is unwise to have a quality tuner and not have a quality external antenna.

When you look at the MR 85 which I owned for years it had a signal strength indicator and a few other minimally useful features. That was it. It had none of the really desirable features that the 87 possesses. The remarkable thing about the 87 is that when you look at all the specs they are the same for the adjacent channel as they are for the alternate channel and when you are going up the dial using Seek, the 87 with some exceptions can actually advance in .2 increments, not .4 and the stations are generally clear and free of noise and multipath, and signal strength can be poor, average, good, or high. With my 85, it was basically an excellent alternate channel tuner. On Seek it advanced in increments of .4. On a good FM channel I have never been able to discern much difference in the sound quality between Mac tuners. They uniformly have excellent sound to my ears. I think this is because the audio quality of the sound produced by the station's gear is inferior to the tuner's quality. No tuner can exceed the quality of the station's gear. It's really incredible what Mac has done in almost every part of the audio chain whether it be amplifiers, preamps, sources, etc. Mac has been making tuners for 50 years and these designs have not been lost or forgotten nor has their sound quality. In the MR 87 they seem to have put it all together and created a tuner that can truly advance up the tuning dial in .2 increments with no compromise in sound quality, vary sensitivity and blend, and carefully monitor the quality of the signal.

Many interesting tidbits here about the MR87. I had also (mistakenly) assumed it was simply an MR88 without XM and Sirius - neither desirable to me anyway.

Of all the Mc tuners I've owned, the MR71 remains my favorite, followed closely by the MR77. Of course I've not owned an MR78 or MR80. The MR75 sitting next to me is actually a pretty decent sounding tuner as well, but it's outclassed by both other tuners I own in sensitivity and selectivity.

Sounds like an MR87 should be on my radar as well.

Believe the MR75, like the MX115, has an ALPS sourced front-end (rather than McIntosh). Like you, I found the SQ of same to be the least involving of the McIntosh tuners I've owned. The MR80 that T. DeWick went thru was the best, but I've always wondered about the MR74, which I've read is the best for SQ.

I've had a half dozen MR74s over the years. During that time, the MR71 was my main tuner. Looking back I don't think I ever gave an MR74 much listening time ... I was buying, restoring, reselling.

Yes, the MR75 has an Alps front end. However, it's really quite a nice sounding tuner. It's just not particularly good at the tuning aspects ...

There's a truly beautiful MR 71 on Ebay for 850 dollars. It looks fully restored. If I were a tuner aficionado (which I am not) I would buy this piece. Also, I don't have an analog input on my preamp (D1100). I have always had a tuner and the D1100 necessitated I buy the MR 87. Now that I have, I'm really glad I did. But this is a beautiful piece for 850 dollars. The 71 is beautiful and I'm sure it sounds as good as it looks. It's taken Mac a long time to return to the classic tuning dial of the MR 71. Mac had such a beautiful tuning dial in their vintage tuners before the 80. Then they abandoned it only to resume it in the 87 about 40 years later. To me a tuning dial makes a tuner.

Dumb question: What is "SQ"?

I am retired and do a lot of late night listening in my man cave which is totally isolated from the sleepers in the house. It's my favorite time to listen and I arise in the morning when I feel like it. Right now I'm enjoying the Saens organ symphony through the 87. It's actually quite good.

I've had a 74 and 80 in the same rack for over a year now and switch back and forth between the 2 quite often. To my ears the 80 is the better sounding tuner as well as being the more sensitive.

Charles - shortly ago, I came across a very nice Sansui TU-9900 which I had serviced and aligned. I've really enjoyed my time with it thus far. I also have an equally nice Kenwood KT-8300 sitting on the sidelines at the moment - also the MR75's peer in tuning, but not in SQ - Sound Quality.

You've definitely piqued my interest in the MR87.

Wow the TU-9900 is a great tuner. Looks awesome too.

The MR 87 has piqued my interest as well. Vintage tuners can get expensive to maintain - at least that’s been my experience. So the MR 87 is a potential winner in my book.

We have two homes - one in Colorado where we are totally surrounded by mountains and all the FM is local. The MR 77 lives there and does yeoman work to this day. Sounds great too.

Our Wisconsin home is 80 miles from the Twin Cities and the DX capability of the MR-80 with rooftop yagi really shines here. Plus MPR and WPR stations have excellent fidelity.

The MR 87 could be a tuner for the ages. I don’t really want another analog tuner since DSP has come so far in solving HD radio and adjacent channel issues.