I'm going to say a few things about Geshelli Labs. None of them good. When this small outfit popped up on my radar a couple years ago I decided to read up on the company. I also watched at least one or two interviews with the Geshellis on Youtube. This is where the cringe factor began to materialize. It was this
April 2020 sit down interview with Gino and Sherri that set off some red flags for me. During the interview Sherri, who is to my knowledge, not the electrical engineer in this duo dominated the discussion. Gino seemed uncomfortable and provided very little information. This struck me as abnormal. This was Gino's introduction to the community, or at least one introduction, and he was reticent and frankly mute. He let his wife wear the pants. Following that interview I any notion of buying a Geshelli device evaporated.
Now it wasn't just the bad PR presentation and lack of gumption that dissuaded me from buying a device from Geshelli. It was just the straw that broke the camel's back. There were and still are plenty of other red flags with Geshelli. One of them was product case design. Let's be frank here. The Geshelli devices look like homemade projects. They have been making amps and DACs for how many years now? Two, three, four years? And there's been little if any improvement in the design of the enclosures. John Seaber at JDS Labs mentioned in an
interview last August that he abandoned the old metal case design for the O2 amp because it was in his words, "ugly". JDS Labs switched over to injection molded plastic enclosures when they introduced the Atom line several years ago and then invested in CNC equipment for the Element line. But here we are in 2022 and Geshelli is basically regurgitating the O2 enclosure design from over a decade ago. Even Schiit manages to obtain more elegance with their budget products.
I'll quickly run through the issues with Geshelli:
- As Amir pointed out in this review Geshelli is resorting to snake oil phraseology to coverup the inadequacy of the DAC implementation. When one of their earlier products manage to rank near the top of Amir's SINAD List Geshelli touted that success to perspective customers. Now, they have conveniently turned into science deniers.
- Upselling is another problem with Geshelli. They're business model comes across as a bit sleazy. Charging extra for a USB module for a DAC? For an extra $50 no less. This is an essential fueature that should be standard on any modern DAC. Now they're selling wood enclosures. Are they an Ethan Allen subsidiary now? This is the tackiest thing since the shortlived aftermarket "woodie" earcup fad for Sennheiser headphones in the early 2000s.
- They're always out of stock...not because of demand...not because of the pandemic...but most likely because they can't manage the business or scale it properly.
- Nearly every product launch is delayed endlessly.
- The website design is bad. There's little pertinent information on specifications or product functionality.
