Fisher & Paykel had the worst reliability track record of any appliance company when I looked at their products for our kitchen remodel. No wonder given that statement!
They also make medical equipment.
In the same way that Amir's tests can be seen as consumer information, this applies to many other gadgets. Or everything else actually. In addition, it is really good that practical experiences of different products are shared with others.So thanks for the information restorer- john.
Isn’t this indicative of so many brands built on a reputation garnered when they were a smaller outfit. Someone buys their name (and reputation) and then proceeds to cut as many corners as possible in the manufacturing process to maximise profit. They also normally increase the marketing budget.
Even horrific distortion dance party (>tube amp >3rd harmonic) just can't compete with such a feature.
Chief please do not admonish manufacturers to avoid drama. We like to see agonies and acrimony and self embarrassments unfolding in public in real time. Don’t forget your own title here. There’s little fun in just numbers.
Isn't that simply because (almost) all valve amps need output transformers and high impedance is then unavoidable? I'm no amp designer so please correct me if that's nonsense.
With sufficient voltage feedback, the source impedance can be made low, transformers or no. Most OTLs (all that I have ever seen) have higher source impedance than conventional engineered transformer-coupled amps. The kicker is that transformers can make putting in high levels of negative feedback a real challenge for stability.
That's actually a risky business though, because you have to touch the device and its not properly grounded. Considering the rest of the build quality I would avoid using this piece of electronics, regardless of how it sounds or measure just on the basis that is dangerous.
I wonder if the Silver Seven is any good, ignoring the price <https://www.bobcarvercorp.com/silver-seven>
Even if the poor measured performance might be irrelevant when it comes to "sound quality", how do you justify the high price when such performance can be achieved for a few 10s of $?
Assuming for now that it sounds OK-to-good, how do you justify the poor build quality and safety aspects for such an expensive product?
Conceptually dangerous. But less dangerous than going back down into his basement I expect. Or carrying one of the big Genelecs up a flight of stairs.
Yes, it's a bit 'chicken and egg'. Amplifiers of that era were all valved, and consequently had output impedances of around the 1-2 ohms level. Some went lower, but as SIY mentioned, the output transformer was a real limitation to the amount of feedback that could be applied, and therefore how low the output impedance could go. A very few amplifiers, notably Radford, had superb output transformers, and could apply a lot more feedback than the norm, but most couldn't. OTL amplifiers didn't have the transformer problem, but had the inherent output impedance of the valves themselves to contend with. It was possible to reduce the output impedance by lot of valves in parallel, but that very quickly became impractical due to power consumption, heat and not least, cost.
It doesn't.
