Inferior Parts in EXPENSIVE components

[iridium]

Tell your stories of Inferior Parts discoveries:
Expensive speakers with junk crossovers or other wiring.
Huge transformer covers with baby garbage transformers underneath.
Components that do not warranty the tubes that blow in weeks.
Rust and/or dirt, etc. in components.
Expensive cables or interconnects assembled like sh__.
Expensive cables or interconnects that sounded like a Pooh Xylophone.
Wiring & Soldering that looks like a very over-cooked bowl of pasta.
etc., etc., etc.

iridium.

 

[Thomas savage]

these are the x-overs in my £25000 ($38000) speakers... make your own minds up

 

[iridium]

View attachment 362

these are the x-overs in my £25000 ($38000) speakers... make your own minds up

My mind is made up: hmmm
I deleted the rest.

iridium.

 

[Thomas savage]

My mind is made up: hmmm
I deleted the rest.

iridium.

no let fly, its why i posted it.. i am unoffendable, truth is truth and i can be offended by truth and BS is BS so that can't offend me either.

 

[Purité Audio]

I was told a great story, client sends CDP away for new clock ,and 'upgrading' , after a few months the fascia panel dies, customer sends it off to authorised repairman.
He says that new clock has been powered from fascia panel and that's why it has died.
Customer asks about other upgrades , repairman says, 'what other upgrades'!
Despite the original 'modder' showing customer a cup full of components which he had 'upgraded'!
Keith.

 

[Thomas savage]

I was told a great story, client sends CDP away for new clock ,and 'upgrading' , after a few months the fascia panel dies, customer sends it off to authorised repairman.
He says that new clock has been powered from fascia panel and that's why it has died.
Customer asks about other upgrades , repairman says, 'what other upgrades'!
Despite the original 'modder' showing customer a cup full of components which he had 'upgraded'!
Keith.

who was that??

 

[Purité Audio]

Why have you been shown a dusty cup of components recently!
Keith.

 

[iridium]

no let fly, its why i posted it.. i am unoffendable, truth is truth and i can be offended by truth and BS is BS so that can't offend me either.

The components are not garbage, they are standard grade. ??? Did you pay for standard grade speakers???

This is like a $5 million dollar house, and the builder/developer PROUDLY BOASTS that the house is built to code. CODE is Minimally Acceptable Standards!
?Do you think the buyer of that $5 million dollar house would be happy if he knew he bought Minimally Acceptable Standards?

iridium.

 

[Thomas savage]

Why have you been shown a dusty cup of components recently!
Keith.

of course... i have a box of parts in the loft tell me who it can be our secret and might save me some money down the road..

 

[Blumlein 88]

I have a reverse story. Spent some time modding and upgrading almost all components in a friend's power amp. Made it truly better, and just about the best of anything you could get inside. When said friend decides to sell it he asks about undoing all that. Then immediately decides it is a bunch of trouble. How can a guy complain if he opens it up and finds everything is much higher quality than he expected. Now the work done was neat, professional and reliable. So he simply sells it without disclosing the upgrades. Parts cost of those were a significant portion of the selling price.

Well little did we know this guy was running a review website in the early days of such web activities. My friend finds out when he gets an email with a link to the review of his amp. He does a lavish review of the sound of the amp and how well constructed it was (though thankfully he didn't actually list components). My friend decides he is obligated to own up to it all and contacts the reviewer/buyer to explain how this is not a stock amp and not representative in a way that a review should be done. The fellow listens to all this, is silent for a bit, and then says, "oh well.....okay.....well thanks for letting me know that." Nary a word was put up or anything changed on his website and the review was there at least for a couple years.

 

[Blumlein 88]

You see all the concern for power cords and such these days. Quite a few of the early CJ tube gear used non-detachable aluminum power cords. Those products were exceptionally well done in construction, and I found it odd they would skimp on that part. I only know because I added detachable cords to a few pieces of CJ gear for people. I don't know if all early CJ gear had these cords, but those early ones I changed the cord on did.

 

[tomelex]

View attachment 362

these are the x-overs in my £25000 ($38000) speakers... make your own minds up

they look fine to me, they are coils and caps (most look like poly types and some high wattage (albeit pretty common) resistors, but hey my crossovers are not so much the issue as the fact that its pretty much true that passive just take away micro details vs active. Active is truly high end, but saying that, my JBLs are passive crossed. Actives actually, if adjustable, add a whole new dimension to tailoring sound, and doing it without affecting micro details which are simply turned into heat in these "wattles components" that are actually not perfect realizations. Also, speakiers do best when the amp in general has firm control over them if you are using a voltage source, as most speakers are designed to be driven from, that passive crossover mucks up the sound no matter how you look at it. But, we would not know it unless we were given a bypass test of some sort anyway.

Short answer, coils and decent poly caps are fine, if you have any electrolytics in there that will be a cause for future concern, and those high wattage resistors could be better set up with smaller wattage but in parallel or series or series parallel and "could" give a bit better sound, I say "could".

Don't sweat it, its the whole picture anyway when it comes to audio and speakers and the room certainly are most of the picture. I have never felt it necessary to change out my crossovers. I do try to rotate (90 degrees) my speakers every few years though to lessen the effects on gravity on the mechanical parts of the speakers.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Repaired one of the legendary huge Mark Levinson class A ML2 power amps once. The front lamp wouldn't burn on one of them in a pair. It was on the rocker on/off switch. I am fuzzy on some of the details, but it had a circuit that inserted I think a 10 ohm or maybe 1 ohm resistor in series with the output, and also limited voltage to the output stage for the first few seconds. It did this using relays, a thermistor and electrolytic caps. Nothing in the signal path once the output resistor was switched out. Anyway, the electrolytic caps were polar types and in this one amp were installed in the wrong direction and had failed over time. It clearly was the original cap, and at least a couple of previous owners had listened to this amp in this condition. The amp functioned and had maybe 20% normal power this way as well as going through an output series resistors. Now it sounded much better once it was repaired. One thinks golden eared audiophiles would have detected it right away. Hah! Now a feather in my own cap as when I first heard them I said the channels didn't sound the same. When I then learned the light did not come on in that channel I hypothesized something more was off about it. Literally a 59 cent part needed replacing and reversing to fix it.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Repaired a very expensive Goldmund Mimesis preamp once. One of the inputs would work a minute or so and then become very noisy or sometimes stop altogether. Seems like it was either a $5 or $6k model at the time. Those units did all the switching of inputs at the rear and had mechanical ribbon cables that went from the front knobs to the rear panel. Separate amplifying transistors for each input. These were thin units and the ribbon cable passed right over the top of one of the transistors. The one giving problems. I found it was overheating because the ribbon obstructed air movement and these little units were running of course in class A. I was always taught to use a 2 to 1 safety factor in sizing transistors. Well Goldmund was running more like a 10% safety factor on the dissipation versus transistor power rating. Seems maybe these were .5 watt units. The same semi-conductor company had an identical transistor designation with identical specifications with a .7 watt power rating. Putting that one in fixed the problems.

I called the owner explaining how Goldmund was running these pretty hot, how the cable obstructed one of them and it died early due to heat effects. Told him I could have replaced it with the same part, but it wouldn't last too long in my estimation. So I found an exact same transistor available with a 40% higher power rating. He said he knew Goldmund gear was expensive how much did this cost for an even better version of their part. I then told him the problem was I had to buy a pair they didn't sell them individually. With trepidation in his voice he asked so how much did it cost for two? I told him I could have ordered them for about half the money, but I got them locally. So the price was almost a dollar with tax.

 

[iridium]

The Blumlein 88 replies reminds me of two computers that I through into a dumpster. These computers were made by a major company based out of Austin, TX. Later, after meeting engineers that worked for the company, I received an education on why the computers were such garbage. If the company could save a fraction of a penny on a component, that cheaper component was the one used. The company also setup the internals in a manner that made it extremely difficult for an independent to work on them.
In my area, I use an independent group called Hard Drives Northwest. If I need a component change, a repair, or Virus eradication [my only problem]; I just place the computer on their counter.

iridium.

 

[Purité Audio]

I am not sure these parts are particularly cheap, but the product is exceptionally expensive,


Keith

 

[Thomas savage]

yea, there is nothing it in but still prob 30k should be more like 5k.. this is the problem, small one man band companies making sod all units a year but want to earn a fortune, pass it on to a distributor who wants to earn a fortune, then pass it on to a dealer who wants to earn a fortune. when really the product should be sold direct through dealers or on the web or better still made by a large electronics firm who have scale of production on their side and pay the designer a license fee of some kind.

its robbery what goe on in hi fi.

 

[NorthSky]

View attachment 362

these are the x-overs in my £25000 ($38000) speakers... make your own minds up

1. Your speakers cost more than the crossovers above.
2. Those crossovers above seem to have enough copper and filtering capacitance?
3. I cannot read the brand label, are they any good?

 

[Thomas savage]

1. Your speakers cost more than the crossovers above.
2. Those crossovers above seem to have enough copper and filtering capacitance?
3. I cannot read the brand label, are they any good?

vivid audio G3 bob, some say they are excellent speakers. just how much better they would be without the basement level resistors and caps is debatable.

 

[NorthSky]

I'm no expert Tom, that's why I love audio. And this is a thread that I'm interested in.

- About this one: http://www.tnt-audio.com/sorgenti/trinity_tech_e.html

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