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

[Punter]

I disagree on the cost of the enclosure. I have an 80W CO2 laser cutter that I use for various things and it would walk this enclosure. From the original video, I'd say the enclosure was actually made using a combination of laser and CNC as there are slots cut in the top and base to locate the sides. It looks to be either 4 or 5 mm acrylic. The material costs here would be maybe $AUD 20-30 in material so $US 10 to 15 roughly. The all-thread and foam pads would add another dollar or two. In addition to that, the circuits themselves, according to Mark, are lifted straight from the manufacturers sample circuits on the data sheets (we've seen that before!).

As I mentioned in a previous post, the components with the numbers sanded off are likely to be voltage regulators "designed" by the maker of the pre-amp. This is so ridiculous that its hard to believe that anyone would claim such a thing. However, the "High-End" is rife with such claims as the target audience is known to be largely bereft of electronic, electrical or technical understanding.

One detail that I missed on the original video was that the unit was sent to Mark by the manufacturer with the assertion that he wouldn't be able to repair it? This in itself is bizarre, let alone the manufacturers attempt to censor the outcome! Just as with DCS, this attempt to silence unfavorable public media has only served to make it more prominent. The Streisand effect in action!

 

[harkpabst]

I don't quite understand why we should be discussing ...

• how incredibly bad LP records are as a source.
• how incredibly stupid anyone spending 25000 GBP on a piece of kit must be.
• how incredibly sure we can be that those customers don't know shit about room acoustics.
• how incredibly expensive/inexpensive good/bad perspex/acrylic is as a case material.

All this is totally irrelevant. What's relevant in this context is this:

One detail that I missed on the original video was that the unit was sent to Mark by the manufacturer with the assertion that he wouldn't be able to repair it? This in itself is bizarre, let alone the manufacturers attempt to censor the outcome! Just as with DCS, this attempt to silence unfavorable public media has only served to make it more prominent.

There's a guy (supposedly) named Tom Evans who seems to run a business named "Audio Design" or maybe "Tom Evans Audio Design". We can't tell for sure, because there's no imprint to be found on the website advertising products like the MasterGroove SR Mk3 phono pre-amp.

YouTube confirms the existence of a digital identity "Tom Evans", as said identity filed a copyright claim against a well respected electronics repair channel based on no claimed facts. We can safely conclude that the identity known as Tom Evans doesn't want anybody to know about the obviously not so secret "secrets" he claims to have kept to himself when developing "a range of products" for "Pioneer GB".

This is what we should be talking about. Some guy trying to suppress knowledge, free speech and the right to repair.

The only reason I am posting this about the MasterGroove SR Mk3 and Tom Evans is to make sure that anybody searching the Internet for any related keyword should end up here.

 

[Jim Taylor]

YouTube confirms the existence of a digital identity "Tom Evans", as said identity filed a copyright claim against a well respected electronics repair channel based on no claimed facts. We can safely conclude that the identity known as Tom Evans doesn't want anybody to know about the obviously not so secret "secrets" he claims to have kept to himself when developing "a range of products" for "Pioneer GB".

This is what we should be talking about. Some guy trying to suppress knowledge, free speech and the right to repair.

 

[Count Arthur]

 

[Chrispy]

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.

LOL maybe a 24000 discount (and that's being extremely generous)

 

[Mad_Economist]

Rossman would appear to have missed the context of the shot of the output noise (he appears to believe it is the ripple of the DC supply under "normal circumstances"/not with the shorted cap), and also inexplicably spends some time slandering the (quite good) NE5532 opamp, but I'm glad more attention has been brought to it.

 

[1st.Virtual.Me]

Louis Rossmann jumps in
"
@rossmanngroup

6 hours ago
With your permission, I would like to re-upload your original video to my channel. Then, if a fraudulent copyright claim is filed on my channel, I will fight it to the fullest extent of the law, to the point that a lesson is learned to never do this again. You do good work, sir, I respect your work, and I want to help send a message to companies that do this kind of abuse that it doesn't work.
"

Tom Evans sent the preamp to Mark, and he told Mark he wouldn't be able to fix it.
Mark did fix it! And there is video proof.

If the video ever gets reposted, everyone will see what a talented engineer Mark is.

 

[kemmler3D]

I disagree on the cost of the enclosure. I have an 80W CO2 laser cutter that I use for various things and it would walk this enclosure. From the original video, I'd say the enclosure was actually made using a combination of laser and CNC as there are slots cut in the top and base to locate the sides. It looks to be either 4 or 5 mm acrylic. The material costs here would be maybe $AUD 20-30 in material so $US 10 to 15 roughly

Tend to agree, having laser-cut some acrylic in my day, stuff like this is easy to fabricate as long as you can draw something in 2D CAD, and the material costs about $12 per square foot for the nice thick stuff. Assuming he doesn't buy in bulk and makes them himself, the case would cost about... $30 to make. More like $60-100 if he gets them fabricated somewhere. I would guess less than the cost of the electronic components.

 

[Frank Dernie]

Tend to agree, having laser-cut some acrylic in my day, stuff like this is easy to fabricate as long as you can draw something in 2D CAD, and the material costs about $12 per square foot for the nice thick stuff. Assuming he doesn't buy in bulk and makes them himself, the case would cost about... $30 to make. More like $60-100 if he gets them fabricated somewhere. I would guess less than the cost of the electronic components.

Sweet Jesus you guys have a spectacularly low hourly rate for design and labour.
IME material cost for things like this is a negligible part of the cost.

OTOH it is true that CAD/CAM software is 3 orders of magnitude cheaper and easier to use than it used to be and cheap hobby style NC machines are now available too.

It looks like NC machined to me.

One of my team who developed the electronics for active suspension in Formula 1 considered building a high end bit of HiFi 30 years ago. He wanted an all machined case without visible bolts rather than a bent steel box with a fancy fascia that most use (and are cheap to make) and got a quote to make a batch of 25 enclosures using the same construction as a Goldmund Mimesis preamp and they came to £7500 per enclosure assembled. The material cost was negligible but the design, manufacture and assembly cost was not.

This did not include the cost of designing, tooling or making the electronics, just the enclosure.

It was from a high quality machine shop but the idea that production items can be made for zero design and labour cost is pure ignorance.
This acrylic box is mush simpler in construction but will still be expensive in comparison to the PCBs.

 

[kemmler3D]

the idea that production items can be made for zero design and labour cost is pure ignorance.

Even if we rate TE's labor cost at $1K per hour, one of these cases is probably a $530 job if he does them in batches. The design surely took a day or two of work, but at $25K MSRP at what I assume is a solo operation, I think that comes out in the wash...

 

[Frank Dernie]

Even if we rate TE's labor cost at $1K per hour, one of these cases is probably a $530 job if he does them in batches. The design surely took a day or two of work, but at $25K MSRP at what I assume is a solo operation, I think that comes out in the wash...

In normal manufactured products like when I was involved at Garrard and with cars the production cost was about 10% of retail.
In high end stuff it may well be less like this sort of thing and Bugattis! They don't sell many so the price will be "how much money do I want to stay in business"/number sold per year.

 

[ObjectiveSubjectivist]

Watching Mark is always a pleasure.
Sad to see video was taken down

 

[amirm]

In normal manufactured products like when I was involved at Garrard and with cars the production cost was about 10% of retail.
In high end stuff it may well be less like this sort of thing and Bugattis! They don't sell many so the price will be "how much money do I want to stay in business"/number sold per year.

That's exactly it. If someone forced me to build phono stages to sell, I would have to charge something like this to remotely be able to put food on the table. He is saying that only 10 are built per year. At $20,000 each, that is just $200K gross! He is lucky if his take home pay is $50K after producing such complex monstrocity with all those boards and such.

The main issue here is the copyright strike. There is no just to justification for this. Google should have a system in place for this. The man has no music or borrowed videos in there. How could there be a copyright strike???

 

[Mart68]

That's exactly it. If someone forced me to build phono stages to sell, I would have to charge something like this to remotely be able to put food on the table. He is saying that only 10 are built per year. At $20,000 each, that is just $200K gross! He is lucky if his take home pay is $50K after producing such complex monstrocity with all those boards and such.

The main issue here is the copyright strike. There is no just to justification for this. Google should have a system in place for this. The man has no music or borrowed videos in there. How could there be a copyright strike???

There is also a pre and power amp and there are six phono stages in the range, so total output isn't just ten of these phono stages per year.

$50K p/a take home is a lot more than most people (including me!) make in any case. And that's for a full working week, not knocking up a phono stage once every full moon and spending the rest of the time at the beach.

 

[Jimbob54]

Ive merged 2 threads covering this topic .

 

[amirm]

There is also a pre and power amp and there are six phono stages in the range, so total output isn't just ten of these phono stages per year.

I am doing the ROI on that one product. In such small quantities, the retail cost needs to be astronomically high.

$50K p/a take home is a lot more than most people (including me!) make in any case.

An electrical engineer could easily make 3 to 4 times that working for a company. While the overall product is not well put together, the person who designed it clearly knows enough about electronics to make that kind of money working in corporate world.

 

[Mart68]

I am doing the ROI on that one product. In such small quantities, the retail cost needs to be astronomically high.


An electrical engineer could easily make 3 to 4 times that working for a company. While the overall product is not well put together, the person who designed it clearly knows enough about electronics to make that kind of money working in corporate world.

Agreed, but he'd also have to work 9-5, be answerable to a boss, have targets and deadlines set for him, and so forth.

I'm not opposed to him charging £25K, what he charges is up to him. But from buyer's perspective the VFM is low. Very low.

 

[Frank Dernie]

But from buyer's perspective the VFM is low. Very low.

I don't think anybody would question that but it equally the case for most HiFi from small manufacturers having to amortise design and tooling costs against a tiny number of sales, but Tom Evans claiming copyright infringement to protect his BS is outrageous.

We have seen what can be achieved by a first class engineer making a BS free phono stage so nothing about this thing is impressive.

 

[Jungstar]

Is there any way to get access to a blocked YouTube video? -Like archive.org or something similar for videos?

Yes, it is avaliable here:

CLICK> LINK TO VIDEO - PREAMP TOM EVANS

 

[Mart68]

We have seen what can be achieved by a first class engineer making a BS free phono stage so nothing about this thing is impressive.

No question - if I was going to get a phono stage it would be his MM Pro.