spritzer

He's also using Speakcon connectors for the umbilicals which aren't designed for these voltages. They can take them though but there are so many other options which are probably cheaper too. On the KGSS amps I built a few years ago I used the Powercon connectors which are very similar but one was blue and the other one gray with the sockets to match. Today I'd use the same connectors as Justin is using on the BHSE. He's referring to KG (probably due to my pulled thread listing the ES issues and KG's offer to repair a few amps) and it was KG who told me. I wasn't claiming that there wasn't anybody willing or able to repair SP amps out there as I was merely pointing out that KG wasn't willing to do so without dragging his name into it all. I should have included his name in the first place to eliminate all confusion but the fact is that no one has stepped forward and said, "I'll repair SP amps". You may very well find somebody to do so locally but not everybody is that resourceful. As for why this issue of unrepaired amps matters, well many have been sent in for repairs and Mikhail has done nothing. Kane's was probably the worst case, shipping the amp all the way from Africa, having the amp held hostage by Mikhail for months on end and then sending it back without fixing a single thing. If somebody did that to your car then you would probably sue them but the amp can cost more then a car and is many orders of magnitude less complicated.

Did he put any padding in the headband while he was at it? The SR-X is a great design but comfort is... uhhh... lacking.

The parts would be here in a month the earliest so I'm letting it cook for now.

In the post he pointed to the individual being a respected designer so while the guy that sorted the amp out of Purk is willing to do repairs, he wasn't referring to him. Any competent repair guy that knows about tubes can fix SP amps as the basic schematics are all out there. As for those 13 stepping forward, you know damn well why that will never happen. I've asked most of the individuals that contact me about issues with any component to come forward and tell others about it but they all fear retaliation. The best way for those people is to offer them a way out by posting the contact information of somebody willing to repair their amps. Btw. JP, your post is spot on

It did a bit better running overnight but it's still thin. I'm letting it cook now on my Shigaclone but I opened it up again and there are only 4 BG's in this unit. I'm thinking about swapping all the other caps for Elna Silmics.

While it certainly isn't a secret what transistors Justin is using now I'm not really sure why he would release the schematics.

There isn't a list of broken amps somewhere but I'll tell you the back story of those 13 I mentioned. There is an ES-1 for sale over on HF and in the listing the seller says he knows of an individual in the US that will repair SP amps. There is no truth to this but it's not hard to work out who he's talking about and last I heard there were 13 owners that had asked for help with their units.

I'm not talking about the Benchmark DAC1 but the AudioZone Dac1... I know, get creative with the names people!!! That is a very mellow NOS dac but with excellent bass for its simple design and a surprising amount of detail.

I do hope that it will change as of now it doesn't stand a chance compared to the DAC1 which has been running 24/7 for a few months now. Congested soundstage which lacks all depth, the bass has improved a little but not by much and the top end is edgy and all round nasty. The bass also lacks definition and is very "dynamic" as it just thumps along. I did take a peek inside before I fired it up and I can see some Silmics in its future. I'll also have to wire up a power led for it as it is missing.

Good to know... It's BS though as the writer was taking part in one of Iceland most popular sports, tricking stupid foreigners. According to this we would also have shitcreek.

I did buy it a while ago but it just arrived, a NOS Museatex bitstream fully modified. I just dropped it into my computer rig and after running for only a few minutes there is something very wrong with the bass as it goes deep but has no bloom making the sound thin. It may need to warm up though and the power and digital cables I'm using are also new (from Moray James) so it could be them. I'll let the whole thing cook for a few hours and see where I'm at. I'll be opening it up soon so expect pics in the usual place...

Being very drunk helps enormously. We also eat some rotten flat fish but I never touch this stuff... I much prefer some Domino's. One joke though, What do you do when your lost in an Icelandic forest? You stand up

Yup, h

I'm sure that you are right as (if I remember correctly) the maximum voltage swing of the H2 is 200v but they require a lot of current instead.

They say that about Iceland too though it's more like 3 minutes.

...or you could just run it off the BH.

I haven't read the article as there is only one audio publication that is worth paying any attention to, the rest is crap IMO. I'm drawing my conclusions from having lived with a few ML's (back in my speaker days) and having quite a few friends that do own Logans and are happy with them. I've also worked on them, replacing panels and the like. I'd love to be able to tolerate the Logan's as they are cheap and look good but they simply aren't good and the design sucks, even in comparison to granddad, the ESL57. It's my opinion and it is based on my knowledge of ES technology and studying how their speakers are built. If you like them, that's fine but never claim that they are well designed or built as that is a load of BS.

It is indeed sad and he's been asked time and time again to clean up his act but he never listens. He's also found the common weakness of all audiophiles and exploited it mercilessly i.e. a lot of upgrades promising better performance and charging a bundle for them. I couldn't care less about Mikhail but I do feel bad for the customers as their amps might become worthless (or very worth very little) on the used market. They could be fixed though and converted into something much better but it will require a lot of work and even more money.

Asking him to take a look wouldn't be a bad idea. All the SP designs are out there so the schematics are easy enough to come by if he doesn't know them already.

No grudge here except the usual of selling crap at high prices to people that don't know any better. A friend did buy a CLS Mk1 one and it works just fine and is a great speaker. The CLS was a labor of love and respect for electrostatics but those days are long gone for ML. They've been bought out and are not now only making money. They claiming that the care about sound doesn't make it true in any way. That's akin to Ray's claim of the B-52 being the end all preamp and some are buying that crap. If simple cathode followers and flimsy, outdated ESL's strapped to bass units that can't work together are your thing then more power to you. I don't see how discontinuing the CLX makes them care about QC other then that they want to sell products that work (i.e. produce some sound) so they don't have handle repairs all the time (like Quad). ML could have made a lot of money on the CLX if they had simply copied the CLS with a stiffer panel with a thinner diaphragm, more bias and in a braced aluminum frame. It's simple and works well. Another tweak they could charge a fortune for would be the stands to minimize room reflections. ML are a bit like Quad though as they started out doing something new but were bought out and are now rehashing the same old crap but the Quads are quite good when working right. To put all of this into context lets look at Sound Lab. The CLX was 25k$ so well into S-L territory. Sound Lab have been hard at work making speakers that last and are on the cutting edge with the ProStat and it's domestic variant the Majestic. They've reached new heights in producing stiff frames from wood and the 12kV bias is groundbreaking. They use teflon coated diaphragms to make the insane bias possible without the fear of arcing. They've also worked on the backplates making the speakers more efficient with better components in the signal path.

There was indeed a set in Friends but those were Audiostatic's in the House pilot. To bad they replaced them...

Nope but their product placements in TV shows is a clear indication of who they want to reach. I was watching Chuck earlies and behold, what is in the AV room but a set of ML's. Why would they make the panels smaller and smaller and concentrate so much on the look of the speakers if they were after SQ and not looks. They've also made the panel overlap the bass unit for years now which simply makes no sense except for aesthetics. Why would anybody give the backwave a nice sturdy surface to bounce back from? They've also spent more time on making the panels look better then spending R&D time to make real improvements.

That is seriously fucked up. I other SP news, a little bird told me that there are at least 13 broken SP amps out there of all types in need of repair and they won't send them to Mikhail. It seems that somebody could make a nice living cleaning up Mikhail's crap.

They are slightly curved but it's small compared to the ML's. They are the definition of crazy when it comes to speaker design. There seems to be a new kid on the block, has anybody heard these yet?