Your most disappointing purchase or audition?

It seems that the issues that Tubes108 is talking about did not occur. I say that because I've not heard of this event and this company is too small for something like this to slip by me.

I take issues with a number of comments in the post- for example the preamps don't 'blow tubes'! We use a custom wire for internal hookup- so there would not have been one amp built with stranded wire and the other built with solid core. They would have both been solid core- we don't even stock a stranded hookup wire. Further, his comments about changing resistors to save time and 'Some directional components within the preamp were installed backwards', seem just dead wrong to me- the preamp is not likely work with electrolytic caps installed backwards(!) and certainly not with diodes either, on top of that we play each piece for 3 days to a week prior to shipping.

It does not surprise me that a power tube could have arced in one of our amps. We have seen tube failures (arc-over being the main failure mode) for 38 years. The amps are built to survive such events- its nothing new. We warrant the tubes for a year and its most likely that we will see failure of tubes immediately after shipping, depending to some degree on the shipping itself. But especially with the MkIII models (introduced 10 years ago) and newer, we have yet to see a tube failure damage the amp. However if Tubes108 was inside the product changing resistors to different values as he says, it is possible that this caused some of the damage he describes.

Right now I am feeling very much like this was some sort of drive-by potshot as neither I nor any of my staff can recall such an event. We are human of course, so we have a warranty to take care of the fact that we are not perfect, and our gear is entirely hand-wired, so there is certainly a human element. So I concede that we don't have a perfect record of shipment without failure or screwup on our part- that comes with the territory! But what I am seeing described is failures in all three products sent to one customer, in particular that details presented are not only unlikely but some of them are flat outright impossible, so I take this post as some sort of trolling event where there is possibly an underlying agenda.

I think I am sticking with my original assessment on this one.

As far as I can figure, he's making it up, its certainly not anything in warranty.

Per my Atmasphere equipment. I was young and naive, assumed there was a common goal to make those purchased-new products work properly. After more than a yr of efforts at repairs I realized my goal differed from others.

Even our first amps and preamps were designed to be easy to service; this was because I worked in a number of consumer electronics repair operations while putting myself through engineering school.

Since we never wired a single amp with stranded wire (unless it was supplied by the customer; before we got our own custom wire made, we had a jig that allowed us to strip a solid core wire from coax cable), I am very confident that Tubes story is 100% made up. He has some form of agenda that has nothing to do with audio. Either that or he has totally confused us with someone else.

Kiddman, Tubes108 was referring to a set of MA-1s.

I have made plenty of mistakes in my career and I try to be the first to admit that. However I still have troubles with Tubes108's testimony. Again, we would not have built a pair of amps wherein one used stranded wire and the other solid wire. We have sent parts to customers for field repairs in the past but there is still something wrong with this picture that has me suspicious. We have a fairly relaxed warranty - its transferable, and while usually three years, depending on circumstances we will extend the warranty quite a lot further.

For example one time a vendor sold us some bad power transformers. It turned out that their faults could not be tested accurately on the bench and a number of them made it into the field. The company policy is we replace them under warranty regardless of the age of the amp.

Now what is bugging me here is that if there was an under-rated resistor value in the output section, that would have required a complete rebuild of the output section itself to repair. I know I would have felt really nervous about someone doing that in the field and it seems unlikely that I would have allowed that as there are some very critical connections in the output section- instead we would have handled it here.

**At the very least, these amps would have been bought used, and likely modified- they did not ship from us to Tubes108!**

Further, there is no place in the preamp wherein a diode could be installed backwards such that it could damage a resistor, let alone one that was part of the Caddock resistor package option!! FWIW though, some of the Caddocks are gray to start with, while others of the same value are black. If a diode was installed incorrectly, the preamp could not have passed testing or the listening testes. It would have blow fuses or one channel would have had no gain!

IOW the more Tubes108 reveals, the more I doubt his testimony.

Tubes108 cannot be contacted through this site like many members can, so there has been no mechanism to contact him directly to sort this out. His testimony isn't credible so I am forced to believe he has an agenda. He has certainly made no effort to contact us, which IMO would be something that someone on the up and up would have done at this point.

In short, I think this is all made up.

And yeah, I think tubes108 is unfairly being held to a different standard than the other posters here.

If the standard is that people are talking about stuff that actually happened then its perfectly fair.

Tubes108 is fabricating this whole thing. No product can work with diodes reversed and would never had made it out of the shop as it would not have even powered up properly! Anyone who knows electronics knows that. What he is suggesting is that we don't test our gear nor do we play it; anyone who knows electronics knows that such things would be foolhardy and would put a company out of business in a short time. We have been at it since 1976...

You will notice that over time his story has changed...

In an attempt to be proactive I emailed him about this issue a three days ago (having finally sorted out that it is possible through the audiogon feedback mechanism even when his moniker is not email enabled) to see if I could get to the bottom of this and have got no response other than this public attack. I'm not that hard to contact, I have one of the oldest email addresses in the world, and the phone number is 651-690-2246.

Here is the text of my email to Tubes108:

I finally sorted out that you can be contacted through your feedback panel

Hello Ian,

I also sorted out through the feedback panel that your first name might be Ian.

So- perhaps you could enlighten me about your experience. First, you could start with your name- as it might help in me recalling something about this. The problem I have been having with your posts is that usually I can recall something about the problem from my end- in this case I do not recall anything about it, which suggests that you may not have contacted us and informed us fully about the situation. Or- it may be that its made up. Since we never have stocked stranded wire for hookup purposes as explained in my posts, I have gone with the latter. So- care to discuss it?

Sincerely,

Ralph

Apparently, the answer is 'no'; IME if someone is unresponsive like this its because they don't have the guts to talk to me face to face; if these events had really happened that would have been no problem.