McIntosh Group purchased by PE firm

In College 40 years ago a girl dumped me for another guy who had a part time job in a High End Audio store.  My system  at the time was Advent 3 Speakers, the cheapest Gerrard Tt and Pioneer Receivers available.  This guy bragged about selling McIntosh and I thought why would anyone brag about selling Fruit?

  One night I was fortified with a few beers and found myself outside his store.  I barged in looking for trouble.  The sounds of the music in the store immediately calmed the savage beast.  I didn’t know recorded music could sound like that.  And the wall full of equipment with those meters….My erstwhile rival played me a few things as the store closed.  We didn’t exactly part as friends…I was being to much of a jerk for that to happen…but that was my introduction to high end audio.

  McIntosh still makes great products, and I’ve owned a few, but they are synonymous with conspicuous consumption.  I wiil never forget the scene in the movie The Departed when Matt Damon, playing a corrupt cop, shows off his wall of McIntosh components as “fruits” of his ill gotten gains.  I hope they stay afloat, but in this recession, with retirement looming, I will probably never own one again

@jerryg123 You interpret stuff interestingly, but no surprise. Mc has been 3rd rate forever and will remain so. BUT, it is PRETTY! Rich people LOVE IT.

Anyway, PE is in business to make cash, which, from what I can tell these days, is the ONLY reason man is on this Earth. Used to be people were fairly nice and if someone was successful, they realized they owed that success to many others.

Today, the goal is to amass as much as possible and have your name in the public as often as possible. YOU have ARRIVED and are VERY IMPORTANT. Having amassed a fortune, the rest of the world bows down to you like they used to bow down in their chosen place of worship or when contemplating how the universe survived for 4.5 BILLION years without THEIR help!

But, I digress. If something did not happen 5 seconds ago, it is irrelevant, and if you ain’t makin’ a billion a minute, get outta my way.

PE is usually a money grab for one or two people who will never have ENOUGH.

OR, if you stole 400 Billion of your nation’s money, you could start a war and murder everyone in another nation BECAUSE YOU CAN.

We only get 75-100 years here. To the universe, we are pretty much irrelevant and always will be, no matter how much CASH we have or people we murder.

As for Mc, really, at the end of the day, who cares? Some individuals will make a bundle and the world will survive, probably.

Cheers!

@jerryg123 I never said Thailand saved Ducati, HD had a disastrous affair manufacturing in India which was in essence pulled back by Trump.

Triumph is exclusively manufactured in Thailand and has been for a long time.

Pirelli is 100% Chinese owned. Along with hundreds of US and European companies.

I am not pro Chinese, far from it, but if you keep voting for Biden the clown it's just going to get worse until China is your overlord.

@lordmelton  you have a very valid point on the current state of affairs in the United States. Most tire companies are owned or manufacture in China due to lax environmental standards. That trend has been going on for decades.  

Mc is an American Icon in Hi-Fi like them or not and it would be a shame to see them go the way of other iconic American brands like General Electric that has zero US manufacturing now. 

I also hate to say that @jerryg123 has a point also. Many here are looking for the car crash or the body covered on the side of the road. 

Nationalism aside some offshore production of products is necessary, it is just when companies misrepresent this and say made in the USA, or the EU and it is merely assembled of all offshore content. Truth in packaging and COO so the consumer can make the decision weather to buy or not. Voting with their wallet?

I hope that the PE Venture works out for Mc as this is not their first foray into PE waters.

Time will tell.