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Repairing The Questionable £25,000 Tom Evans Audiophile Pre-Amp

I'm visioning: One that has too much money in search of audio bliss, yet will never even consider acoustically treating their listening space :facepalm:
Yeah for sure more money than sense thing but then again it may be more be on visual aesthetic than anything meaningful.
 
Thanks, mate! I thought I had checked everywhere, but you managed to find two sources.

As for the preamp -what an utter disappointment. It looks cheap, feels poorly made, and exudes "plastic fantastic" with its flimsy boards, badly fitted standoffs, and those "handmade copper grounding roofs" that resemble shanty bungalows.

The way the plastic housing is assembled is downright atrocious. I cringed through the entire video, with its price tag haunting me the whole time. Even the feet are just cheap, self-adhesive foam pieces -you don’t even get proper feet for what they’re charging.

The manufacturer was shown at the beginning sitting in front of proper test equipment (similar to what Menditmarks uses). It makes you think the guy knows what he’s doing, which only adds a sinister, cynical edge to the whole operation.

And the filing off of silicon components...:facepalm:

Companies like this need to be held accountable!
 
Hahahaha
1000012392.png
 
Thanks, mate! I thought I had checked everywhere, but you managed to find two sources.

As for the preamp -what an utter disappointment. It looks cheap, feels poorly made, and exudes "plastic fantastic" with its flimsy boards, badly fitted standoffs, and those "handmade copper grounding roofs" that resemble shanty bungalows.

The way the plastic housing is assembled is downright atrocious. I cringed through the entire video, with its price tag haunting me the whole time. Even the feet are just cheap, self-adhesive foam pieces -you don’t even get proper feet for what they’re charging.

The manufacturer was shown at the beginning sitting in front of proper test equipment (similar to what Menditmarks uses). It makes you think the guy knows what he’s doing, which only adds a sinister, cynical edge to the whole operation.

And the filing off of silicon components...:facepalm:

Companies like this need to be held accountable!
I make that assumption with anything so-called High End. The manufacturers must know they're selling a dream, not an engineered product, and their's is no better, often worse technically than something for 1/10th or even 1/100th the price. Consequently, I have zero respect for these so-called designers, just cynically exploiting the wealthy gullible.

I don't find that an admirable trait.

S.
 
I make that assumption with anything so-called High End. The manufacturers must know they're selling a dream, not an engineered product, and their's is no better, often worse technically than something for 1/10th or even 1/100th the price. Consequently, I have zero respect for these so-called designers, just cynically exploiting the wealthy gullible.

I don't find that an admirable trait.

S.
Caveat Emptor.

It's up to the buyer to educate themselves. If they can't be bothered or think they know it all already, well, it's their money they're stuffing down the drain.

What I find interesting is that in other areas the same people are distrustful of salesmen - houses, cars - they will do some due diligence.

But in hi-fi they are totally accepting, as though it exists in a dream world where manufacturers and dealers are only interested in helping them to get the best possible sound, and the financial rewards in selling them some over-priced tat are not at all a motivator.
 
Caveat Emptor.

It's up to the buyer to educate themselves. If they can't be bothered or think they know it all already, well, it's their money they're stuffing down the drain.

What I find interesting is that in other areas the same people are distrustful of salesmen - houses, cars - they will do some due diligence.

But in hi-fi they are totally accepting, as though it exists in a dream world where manufacturers and dealers are only interested in helping them to get the best possible sound, and the financial rewards in selling them some over-priced tat are not at all a motivator.

Correct. And if it stopped there, it wouldn't be so bad. But these chumps get on the Web and advise others to make the same mistake. :facepalm:

Why do so few people do what's right, and so many do what's detestable?
 
What I don't understand is why the manufacturer wouldn't direct a negligible £100 from the £25,000 price tag into actually making the housing of the device not cheap plastic and cardboard crap. Audiophools will believe all the woowoo about perceived subjective differences, but they might be put off by the cheap look and feel of the device.
 
What I don't understand is why the manufacturer wouldn't direct a negligible £100 from the £25,000 price tag into actually making the housing of the device not cheap plastic and cardboard crap. Audiophools will believe all the woowoo about perceived subjective differences, but they might be put off by the cheap look and feel of the device.
Perspex/plastic enclosure supposedly better for sound quality - not true, but widely accepted.

Ironically probably more expensive to do it that way than to just buy in an aluminium enclosure.
 
It would be fun if Mend it Mark would know about this forum, and could talk the owner of the pre to send it to Amirm for testing. I wonder how that would go...
I suggest it wouldn't survive the journey, despite Mark's very best and excellent efforts to restore the casing.
 
What I don't understand is why the manufacturer wouldn't direct a negligible £100 from the £25,000 price tag into actually making the housing of the device not cheap plastic and cardboard crap. Audiophools will believe all the woowoo about perceived subjective differences, but they might be put off by the cheap look and feel of the device.
To be somewhat fair, I believe acrylic this thick isn't exactly cheap. But I do otherwise agree.
 
I make that assumption with anything so-called High End. The manufacturers must know they're selling a dream, not an engineered product, and their's is no better, often worse technically than something for 1/10th or even 1/100th the price. Consequently, I have zero respect for these so-called designers, just cynically exploiting the wealthy gullible.
Absolutely. All to often I hear some members state they believe these manufactures and their supporting "high end" media circus are honest people that believe in their products and all the baloney they slice. Bullcrap, the majority know exactly what they're doing and laughing all the way to the bank.
 
My beef is that vinyl sources are so darned compromised to start with. I'd also venture (ready to duck) that the better player/pickup/built-in-stage models for a grand UK ($1500 or so US) are bloody close to the source recording, the audiophile lack of refinement actually being more like it really is (I have personal vibes about high end record players enhancing some things and compressing/refining other parts out of existence, such is the high end vinyl world). I can no longer experiment with modern gear to confirm it though sadly.
 
So, unlike most here, I've heard two of these phonostages, one lives 100 metres up the road from me.

The people who buy this are, people with 25k to spend on a phonostage who have gone through a long process of testing and home demos,



and probably have never seen inside....

rob has, TE, pre, power, speakers, cables, phonostage, avid Acutus, sme V and benz lp. Yes a fan boy.

Kim has, two huge pairs of Apogees, some monster Gryphon power amp, some high spec US buil auto-former pre, msb digital front end, sme 20/V and a benz lp.

Ive heatd my own phonostage, back to back in both these setups, the TE Master groove is a good phonostage, as good as anything I've heard. It's built like shit though and TE is a bit of a prick.

There you go.
 
Good heavens. 25000? :D

I bet there's RIAA preamp kits for 100-200 that would absolutely smoke this thing. Such as

https://www.thel-audioworld.de/module/phono/Phonovorstufe-B.htm (in German, use translate).

Now, I'm not an expert on phono preamps, but this already seems severely overengineered to me, bordering into snake oil territory. If the claims (like 0.05dB accuracy to reference RIAA curve) are even half true, you can't get any better. Just what my gut feeling tells me: "phono stages are a solved problem and have been for decades, reference quality isn't expensive at all".
 
Look at the build quality of the top stuff coming out of Japan late 1970s through to the end of the 1980s - total overkill, no corners cut, you could see where the money went - and it was around a quarter the price of this stage, when adjusted for inflation. There's no excuse.
 
The ‘cult’ designer, sadly for them measurement arrived.
Keith
 
Just what my gut feeling tells me: "phono stages are a solved problem and have been for decades, reference quality isn't expensive at all".
For sure. Back when PS Audio started they were building high quality, low cost audio products. I used one of Paul's PS III phono stages
for MANY years, it was a great little amp. Switchable for MM/MC gain, input impedance and capacitance, it sounded as good as anything
I'd ever heard. IIRC it cost under $200 sometime in the 80s.
PS_III crop.jpg
 
What I don't understand is why the manufacturer wouldn't direct a negligible £100 from the £25,000 price tag into actually making the housing of the device not cheap plastic and cardboard crap. Audiophools will believe all the woowoo about perceived subjective differences, but they might be put off by the cheap look and feel of the device.
That machined from acrylic and polished enclosure is very probably the most expensive part of the product.

The price is absurd but a lot of trouble has gone into assuring low noise so functionally it could also be very good indeed.

I would be more concerned by how effective the high pass filter is at removing the spurious LF output inevitable from a pickup cartridge - which is almost always ignored by "high end" record player systems due to the ignorance of how they work.
 
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