n_maher Posted July 13, 2008 Report Posted July 13, 2008 (edited) Ok, so we all know about the various issue SP has delivering product on time. Several long standing members here have had rather large issues but everything always seemed to get sorted out, with the exception of Elephas. And, quite frankly, because I've always found Mikhail to be a nice guy when I've seen him at meets I've treated this all pretty lightly and figured that he'd just gotten behind again or underestimated the amount of time that it was going to take for a custom build. That was until today when I read some of the more recent posts in the SP thread on Head-Fi (thread starts here). What I find most troubling are the posts by Elephas, tom hankins and Kang on page 17. Between the 3 of them Mikhail has $30k+ and in each case is way beyond promised shipping deadlines and how (in tom's case) appears to be providing fraudulent shipping information. In addition there is the odd coincidence that moon audio has removed all of the SP information from their site (it's still hosted, but the links are gone). I posted this because while it's not my intention to fan the flames or rip Mikhail I think this is one of those issues that is vital to the community as a whole. Mikhail/SP is a major player and this is bad, really bad. Edited September 11, 2008 by Grand Enigma
boomana Posted July 13, 2008 Report Posted July 13, 2008 Not good. I've been worried about SP for the past year and a half. Hope it's not all crashing down, but it looks like it is. What's weird is that he hosting a meet on the 26th. Singlepower's Colorado Summer Meet - 7.26.08 - Head-Fi: Covering Headphones, Earphones and Portable Audio
tkam Posted July 13, 2008 Report Posted July 13, 2008 Honestly the fake shipping info stuff, has been going on for a hell of a long time. Having said that though, I know for a fact that Mikhails long lead-times and lack of communication at times has cost him quite a few loyal customers over the past year or so. It's really a shame as most of his products do sound great but he has zero business sense and I think it's finally going to start hitting his bottom line if it hasn't already.
tkam Posted July 13, 2008 Report Posted July 13, 2008 Also I should mention that it's been suggested to him numerous times over the past year by a couple different people that he stop taking custom orders and stop taking any orders period till his backlog got a little less crowded. Clearly he hasn't listened, I hope he's not using new orders to pay for doing the backlog... I still like Mikhail as a person, but I'd be hard pressed to do business with him in the future.
Salt Peanuts Posted July 13, 2008 Report Posted July 13, 2008 Damn, I just skimmed through most of the thread. I didn't even know about it (the thread) since I don't visit HF all that often anymore. I'm glad my situation got squared away when it did.
CD44hi Posted July 13, 2008 Report Posted July 13, 2008 Indeed the fake tracking numbers is nothing new. I received one phantom shipment once in 2006. Also another phantom pick-up date that cost me a day of work. Also the screening of phone calls is nothing new. In 2006 I had a period where I tried calling him from my cell phone to discuss delivery times for an order, but calls were never answered and I would not receive a call back from him. I decided to call from a different phone # about 2 mins after unsuccessfully at attempting to reach him via my cell phone. Low and behold, using the different phone #, guess who answered, Mikhail himself. I called him on the fact right there and he denied it. Unbelievable! I had a solid state amp that I sent for "upgrades" in march of 2007, that is the last I saw of that amp. I also committed the stupidity of sending him two populated shallco stepped attenuators with the intention of building a balanced solid state amp. That's not going to happen. I wonder how many people have pending orders with him. It seems quite a few indeed. It really saddens me because not only his products do sound good, and he always is nice person the many times I've spoken with him. He is inventive, works hard (and his wife as well) Yet, I think the crux has been the many custom hi-end load of work that only him can do in his factory, thus he gets overwhelmed due to this. That is some serious cash involved to get such poor customer service. By the same token, I have never been able to get over the fact that he screened me, man that hurt bad. Just lack of respect from someone I considered to be a friend. I remember getting really pissed up when I was trying to talk to him, but he would not answer the phone, then I would read posts of people saying that they just got off the phone with him discussing amps, sales, etc. I am sure this has happened to many. I know people have been nagging him for years to get his stuff together and to put up a good website with good advice and technical help on the subject. But somehow it seems like an unsurmountable task for SP to achieve this. I frankly have had harsh phone conversations with him on the phone in the past about his approach to treating customers reactions after failing to comply with dates that he himself promised. It seems that they go un-listened . I fully agree this is bad for everyone, the hobby in general, SP biz model, and us owner of his stuff.
n_maher Posted July 13, 2008 Author Report Posted July 13, 2008 Todd, I think the biggest thing that would drive me nuts as a customer right now is that every time he shows up at a meet now (see the National, for example) he's got a whole host of new products that clearly took some time to develop. So if I (as a customer) had any illusions that he was working on my gear that would firmly punch a whole in it.
tkam Posted July 13, 2008 Report Posted July 13, 2008 Todd, I think the biggest thing that would drive me nuts as a customer right now is that every time he shows up at a meet now (see the National, for example) he's got a whole host of new products that clearly took some time to develop. So if I (as a customer) had any illusions that he was working on my gear that would firmly punch a whole in it. Oh for sure, that would (and in the past) did drive me nuts. It does sound like it's finally starting to bite him the ass a bit though. Which in the long run might end up being a good thing.
morphsci Posted July 13, 2008 Report Posted July 13, 2008 Unfortunately, as CD44hi has stated, the fraudalent shipping info is not new. I had at least three different shipping emails that turned out to be "mistakes". That was and is the most frustrating part of dealing with Mikhail, not the wait times, but the lies concerning shipping dates and actual shipments. I have refrained from buying any additional even any used SP products as I have absolutely no confidence that I could get them repaired if need be. A true shame as I am very happy with the one amp I do have.
Salt Peanuts Posted July 13, 2008 Report Posted July 13, 2008 Another frustrating thing is that it hasn't always been like this. One of my first amps was a MPX3. While the amp arrived a month later than the original ETA, when I needed a minor repair and an upgrade, the amp came back within a month each time.
Rob N Posted July 13, 2008 Report Posted July 13, 2008 Not just Elephas, tom hankins and Kang include me as well. By Sept 2008 it will be my 2 yr anniversary of waiting I've only seen one picture of the power supply to what is supposed to be my machine
Voltron Posted July 13, 2008 Report Posted July 13, 2008 I cannot imagine sending him my SDS for any reason. I would rather have somebody local work on it if there is a problem. I have considered having him make mono block speaker amps and a true preamp in the past, but that will not happen at all most likely and certainly not until he has gotten his head out of his ass and above water. I like him and love his work, but this shit is out of control.
Iron_Dreamer Posted July 13, 2008 Report Posted July 13, 2008 I'm surprised that it's taken you this long to figure out the charade that is Singlepower Audio. I can't imagine customers in almost any other arena tolerating such behavior, let alone continuing to send the man tens of thousands of dollars. I have no problem with Mikhail personally, heck, I think he is a fun guy to be around. But his business needs to be asswhipped in the worst way at this time. The sheer amount of annoyance and frustration he has caused neilvg alone over these last couple years is insane.
riceboy Posted July 13, 2008 Report Posted July 13, 2008 I'm saddened at the whole situation at SP. I have talked to Mikhail on the phone a bunch of times and like many others I consider him a nice guy. I did have a bunch of tubes on order with him, but I don't think I will see those any time soon. It's just worries me that if anything does go wrong with my SP amps I would have to find someone locally to fix it. I hope that it never comes down to that though. I hope that threads like the long one going on at HF will really wake him up and decide how to make his business model better. I can hope as I do like SP products.
spritzer Posted July 13, 2008 Report Posted July 13, 2008 I know that only a few of the electrostatic amps have been sent out with no issues and some of the new amps are just flat out broken. If there was any customer service then it could be remedied fast but there of course isn't so the owners are stuck with amps that can't hold bias for 5 minutes or have the jacks wired up the wrong way.
tyrion Posted July 13, 2008 Report Posted July 13, 2008 I'm not going to speak for Wayne but he sent and ES-1 to Mikhail for upgrades almost two years ago and it still hasn't returned. He just recieved the ps for the SDS-XLR he sent to Mikhail more than two years ago for upgrades. The amp portion was delivered to me at CJ. Everyone makes their own decisions on how much of this type of behavior that they can tolerate. Some I'm sure think it's worth it to some extent to get one of his amps. That's a personal choice. It's one I would never make. Especially sending the kind of money that it requires to enter the SP high end custom realm. There has to come a point where anyone has to begin to question their loyalty to SP. Maybe we've finaly reached that point. Hopefully, the backlash will finally give Mikhail the push he needs to get SP's act together.
MrSlacker Posted July 13, 2008 Report Posted July 13, 2008 Like others said, Mikhail is a great guy and his amps sound awesome. But I cannot understand how he allows himself to operate his business like this.I think he should stop taking ALL orders for a few months and catch up on his backlog, then start taking new orders again. Unless he does this, I don't see how he can recover.
kevin gilmore Posted July 13, 2008 Report Posted July 13, 2008 First of all this should be moved to a public place because this behind the scenes stuff for more than 2 years is what caused the problem in the first place. Its a shellbrook labs fiasco all over again, except 100 times the amount of money. Fact: mikhail has well over $150k of customer's money Fact: mikhail has well over $150k of customer's equipment for repair/upgrades Fact: the singlepower extreme is DESIGNED TO FAIL. proof: nate recently posted inside pictures of a relatively new unit over at that other site. Notice the big pass fet in the lower left. See any heatsink? or see it bolted to the chassis? Nope. It dissipates over 10 watts. Where does all that heat go, into the circuit board. Look at the circuit board. Even at this very young age, significant amounts of burn on the board. This is bad for a number of reasons, one of which is that when repair is necessary, the whole circuit board needs to be replaced and taking that board in and out plus repairs takes a while. I've done it. Then you have to do what should have been done in the first place, add a heatsink and punch holes in the chassis to secure it to. Truely a miserable design. Any profit mikhail has made on selling the thing in the first place gets eaten up on the first repair. (if it ever gets repaired) After that he is loosing money on each one. Fact: The ES1 is designed to fail and malfunction. proof: the high voltage supply (pictures over there...) is a multiply filtered, but otherwise unregulated supply. Same thing with the bias supply. Now you can actually correctly design a power supply this way, but FOR ONLY ONE KIND OF output tube. Once you try to make a general bias supply to handle different kinds of output tubes the thing just has to drift like mad on a continuous basis. And the plate resistors... The board was designed for non-inductive wire wound resistors. Yet mikhail is using standard heater resistors bolted to the chassis. In fact the same resistors rudistor uses. They sound like shit. Fact: mikhail has been busy buying up all sorts of NOS tubes, mostly of whacky types no one, including him will ever use. A good deal on something that has no use is not a good deal. Plus the soon to come shove this tube down your throat design because he is the only one with the tubes in stock. Plus he is paying for the storage space to store all that crap. Fit and finish: Anything less than about $4k looks like it was done with a spray can by a 2 year old. If that's the finish mikhail wants, take the stuff to any nearby automotive body shop and have a decent finish put on the thing. I would like to hear the 2 big singlepower fanboys here weigh in (pun intended) on the failure of their god.
aardvark baguette Posted July 13, 2008 Report Posted July 13, 2008 Wow. I hear people complain about RSA more than SP, but at least RSA amps get delivered on time, as far as I've heard Thanks for the info guys. Not that I was ever contemplating a SP. The TTVJ 307A just keeps looking more and more appealing in light of this news.
spritzer Posted July 13, 2008 Report Posted July 13, 2008 First of all this should be moved to a public place because this behind the scenes stuff for more than 2 years is what caused the problem in the first place. Its a shellbrook labs fiasco all over again, except 100 times the amount of money. Ditto. If this stuff isn't public then Mikhail can continue to blame it on anybody but him self. There are dozens of these stories and they drag on for years. Fact: The ES1 is designed to fail and malfunction. proof: the high voltage supply (pictures over there...) is a multiply filtered, but otherwise unregulated supply. Same thing with the bias supply. Now you can actually correctly design a power supply this way, but FOR ONLY ONE KIND OF output tube. Once you try to make a general bias supply to handle different kinds of output tubes the thing just has to drift like mad on a continuous basis. And the plate resistors... The board was designed for non-inductive wire wound resistors. Yet mikhail is using standard heater resistors bolted to the chassis. In fact the same resistors rudistor uses. They sound like shit. To make matters even worse he's pushing the design even further now so it's no wonder those amps are breaking down.
n_maher Posted July 13, 2008 Author Report Posted July 13, 2008 Fact: the singlepower extreme is DESIGNED TO FAIL. proof: nate recently posted inside pictures of a relatively new unit over at that other site. Notice the big pass fet in the lower left. See any heatsink? or see it bolted to the chassis? Nope. It dissipates over 10 watts. Where does all that heat go, into the circuit board. Look at the circuit board. Even at this very young age, significant amounts of burn on the board. This is bad for a number of reasons, one of which is that when repair is necessary, the whole circuit board needs to be replaced and taking that board in and out plus repairs takes a while. I've done it. Kevin, Can you point directly to those pictures? After my experience with the Menace I've been really curious to see the inside of an Extreme.
kevin gilmore Posted July 13, 2008 Report Posted July 13, 2008 my bad... nate published the same kind of picture of a mpx3 http://www.pbase.com/n_maher/image/90556175/original.jpg look at the fet lower left corner this is not the picture i was looking for, i have one of an extreme... just have to find it. here are 2 pictures of the extreme. (NOT THE ONES I'M looking for) http://gilmore.chem.northwestern.edu/spe1.jpg http://gilmore.chem.northwestern.edu/spe2.jpg the fet is in the upper left of the second picture, you can't see it...
spritzer Posted July 13, 2008 Report Posted July 13, 2008 Here is another one of the MPX. The fet has obviously been moved to the chassis as can be seen by the burn marks...
kevin gilmore Posted July 13, 2008 Report Posted July 13, 2008 hey i like that one... electrolytics so big at lower left, one is attached to the other with sticky tape because it will not fit into the board...
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