The Difference In Wood Cabinets

While I was searching for a cabinet for my MA-5100, I noticed that the majority of the components can have more than one model of cabinet. To someone who is new to McIntosh, it can get confusing.

For example, the MA-5100 can accept L12, L12R, L52, L52A, and L62. I found out that the L12R is the slant leg cabinet, but I don't understand why one component can have this many different cabinets.

Please help this new owner understand.

McIntosh had a number of vendors for speaker cabinets.....they also built the equipment cabinets so the numbers changed with the different veneers and therefore many numbers for same size. There were size differences in eariest and last cabinets.

c_dk said:

McIntosh had a number of vendors for speaker cabinets.....they also built the equipment cabinets so the numbers changed with the different veneers and therefore many numbers for same size. There were size differences in earliest and last cabinets.

Click to expand...

I appreciate your reply, but how does one know if they are getting the correct cabinet for their component? It should not be that difficult.

Have you been to Berner's McIntosh site? Larry and Patrice have kept it pretty much up to date.....there are pictures, measurements, dates of production, etc etc. You should be able to match up what the owners manual shows. The ma5100 uses a bit of an odd transitional panloc system.

I've got 3 slant leg cabinets for the components in my main system, all L12.
Each one is slightly different than the other in terms of height. They all came from different sources when purchased. I have no idea of the age of each cabinet.
I was once told that the differences were due to different manufactures being used by Mac.

L12 with the slant legs in high grade veneer is period original for the MA 5100. There are so many cabinet options for this unit, due to that size McIntosh component being manufactured for so many years and also, some of the McIntosh preamplifiers and tuners using the same size cabinet. Which works to your advantage, and makes a cabinet easier to find.