MC 3500 Mark II

[TWInsall]

I was fortunate to have used MC 3500 for PA work driving big Altec bi-amped and have installed 3500's for people with Bozak Concert Grands in the 60's and early 70's. . The 3500 at 35 watts indicated made Concert Grands sound totally different than Concert Grands driven by a 275 at the same levels. Even my Grands bi-amped with two 275, later with two 2100's and then 2100 and a 2205, again a 2100 and with a 2250 could not compare to a concert grand driven by 3500. Only when I added super tweeters and tri amped using Crown DC300 A's with the 4 woofers wired in parallel with out the passive crossover did my Grands have the dynamics and the clarity of Grands driven by 3500's.

Friends selling updated 3500's compared them against 2301's preferred the 3500's because they were pure tube without KT88's and the 2301's have solid state components. They also say you can still hear that KT88 sound that the 3500 didn't have from the 2301. Its going to be interesting to hear what people say when they compare their 3500's to the new MK II models . The new MK II's have SS state components, too for the differential balanced input to get the desired signal to noise they were after I was told by others. It might be fun to compare my MC 830's driving my XRT 28's which are 4 ohms against 3500's MK II The same signal to noise and the same dynamic power but my 830's will put 550 watts RMS. But I will never go back to tubes. Unless I win the big lottery. Then I will want the original 3500's for nostalgia reasons.