There's something wrong in Colorado...

[aardvark baguette]

...has just been revoked.

[n_maher]

Just out of curiosity, does this mean that Kevin enjoys the same degree of immunity here that Ray Samuels gets on Head-Fi?

No, it means I don't see much in the way of bullshit there. And if you can point out bullshit there, other than the two-kids-in-the-schoolyard bullshit that's already gone on I'm open to hearing about it. Just leave your axe at the door. I don't care who likes who or who thinks what about the other, my concern lies with the uh, lies that Mikhail has been telling his customers and the overall negative impact that it's having on the community as a whole.

[kevin gilmore]

my concern lies with the uh, lies that Mikhail has been telling his customers and the overall negative impact that it's having on the community as a whole.

Ding Ding Ding... Correct answer. Massive negative impact on the community.

For years now. If mikhails stuff was built like the woo audio stuff, no one would

be having any trouble, or care what it costs.

The whole bunch of proprietary technology is such a load of crap. Starting

with regulated supplies that blow up and burn up then moving to unregulated

supplies (that higher voltage thing) and now finally regulated tube supplies

that cost more than the amplifier...Good stuff.

But if hirsch wants to bring it on, then let it be so. I'm a big boy, i can take it.

No one needs to defend me. I can't think of anyone left alive that could actually

embarass or threaten me.

Someone will move it to a seperate thread when necessary.

Gotta go, busy day today.

[kevin gilmore]

and this

Moderator inquiry -$$$ Singlepower-Who here has money or amps being held by Mikhail? - Head-Fi: Covering Headphones, Earphones and Portable Audio

ouch...

[Beefy]

and this

Moderator inquiry -$$$ Singlepower-Who here has money or amps being held by Mikhail? - Head-Fi: Covering Headphones, Earphones and Portable Audio

ouch...

Ouch indeed! Perhaps the dam has finally burst?

[immtbiker]

and this

Moderator inquiry -$$$ Singlepower-Who here has money or amps being held by Mikhail? - Head-Fi: Covering Headphones, Earphones and Portable Audio

ouch...

So many people are so fearful of retaliation, that they are afraid to post their situation with Mikhail.

I can see their point and understand the concern of never seeing their $13,000 again.

First and foremost, I believe that Mikhail needs to respond in one of these threads and explain what's going on. No bullshit (there's been plenty of that), just straight forward answers to what's going on.

If he's in trouble, he's in trouble and he and the customers he owes money to, can take baby steps towards remedying this "sinking ship" situation.

In this case, silence, is not golden. Mikhail needs to give a realistic, truthful assessment on his curent situation, and create a do-able gameplan towards getting his head back above the water line.

He's lost in a world of muck and mire and he is perpetuating the situation and making it worse by swapping other people's amps that have been recently sent in, to long time waiting customers who are starting to have squeaky wheels. He is promising free upgrades to quiet the restless, and those who have received their upgraded amps, with a different serial number than the original sent in, who know the difference between silver and gold, are reporting that the upgrades are simply not in the amp. This asks the question, "are people paying for upgrades that aren't in the "black box"?

This situation is going to change the face of our audio forums as we know and love them, two-fold. I assume that not too many people will send a check for umpteen dollars to most component builders in anticipation of their amp, unless the amp builder has an impeccable, untarnished record (Justin, Ray, Jan, etc.)

Also, I don't see anyway that Mikhail will ever recover from this because too much money is outstanding and unless there are philantropic angels who believe there is good in all people, including habitual sinners, are willing to front Mikhail money for future projects, even if he "sells the farm", only a winning Mega-millions lottery ticket will be able to bail him out of this one.

Mikhail has been very abusive of Head-Fi, in my opinion. He goes to a lot of local meets, taking up multiple tables, constantly using these meets as a springboard to move his product, but has given very little back to the community. Tiny contributions to pay for the rooms (of the 5 meets that I have hosted, anyway) while the other manufacturers and distributors have been overly generous.

Even with all of this, he needs to step up to the plate and, along with Xin (albeit a lot less money involved), state what his situation is, and propose a plan to start to head in the right direction. Otherwise he will be forced to close shop, leaving all of his financiers holding the bag without any FDIC insurance coverage.

This also includes piggy-back wiring R-10 upgrades for large sums of money. Makes me wonder about the whole Jena Labs crisis. Mikhail was in the middle of the debacle too, no? But we all trusted that Mikhail really received the headphones the way he claimed and now we have to question every instance where we gave him the benefit of the doubt.

[kevin gilmore]

Thanks to aaron for sticking his neck out on this. I'm sure his email and

PM are very full at the moment.

Maybe if a much tighter lid is placed on each and every fanboy, things

can get back to higher quality product with a reasonable design cycle.

All the manufacturers have been clobbered hard by the must have something

new every 3 months thing.

It would be nice if there was actually someone out there that could do

complete custom work at reasonable timeframes and reasonable prices.

This does not exist in the rest of the audio world, so there may actually

be no way to accomplish this.

[Dusty Chalk]

Maybe if a much tighter lid is placed on each and every fanboy...

Or maybe instead of wishing for a fascist regime, we could concentrate on arguing facts rather than ego.

EDIT: I like you Kevin (and also I don't want this to turn into another pissing match), so I'm going to expand on that just a little bit -- I'm not disagreeing with you, or even with anything else in your post. Only the part I quoted. I really don't understand where this stance came from, that there's some sort of cover-up or conspiracy -- Mikhail's issues have been known over here for quite some time, if not the magnitude of the problem. If you look back, I don't recall anyone telling mjg or elephas that they were wrong in being upset with the machinations that they had to go through with Mikhail. Mostly it was commiseration. At least, if I recall correctly.

Can't speak for the other place. Haven't been there in a while.

I suspect the reason that it's been allowed to go on for so long as it has, and to the extent that it has, is because we had only seen glimpses of the tip of the iceberg. For no other reason than each individual couldn't believe that they were part of a larger whole problem. Because no one person other than Mikhail was privvy to all the information to put it together.

I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your ability to say it. Of course, at the same time, I will be defending my own ability to say stuff, too, so it's not all altruism.

Edited July 19, 2008 by Dusty Chalk

[morphsci]

Or maybe instead of wishing for a fascist regime, we could concentrate on arguing facts rather than ego.

Exactly. Some people need to read (or reread) "The Man Who Would Be King".

[deepak]

EDIT: I like you Kevin (and also I don't want this to turn into another pissing match), so I'm going to expand on that just a little bit -- I'm not disagreeing with you, or even with anything else in your post. Only the part I quoted. I really don't understand where this stance came from, that there's some sort of cover-up or conspiracy -- Mikhail's issues have been known over here for quite some time, if not the magnitude of the problem. If you look back, I don't recall anyone telling mjg or elephas that they were wrong in being upset with the machinations that they had to go through with Mikhail. Mostly it was commiseration. At least, if I recall correctly.

I don't remember mjg's situation, but I remember people here telling elephas not to worry about Mikhail's tardiness, insisted on his work being quality, and that he'd be more than happy with the amp he will receive.

[kevin gilmore]

I think you are missing my point entirely. Its the rampant fanboyism

over there that caused a lot of this. Mainly ray finding people to post

about his shit over and over and over, burn in threads, isn't it purdy

threads, and stuffing some of the moderators with free or reduced price

shit so that they could continue the gravy train. So mikhail had to find a way

to do the same thing. mikhail's version was a new amplifier every week.

First the extreme. Then the platinum extreme. Then the extreme platinum.

Then the external power supply. Then the bigger transformer. Then the

tube external power supply. Then the gold plating. Then the pair of boxes

so large. etc. Lets not forget the infinite amount of expensive capacitors.

The whole mess turned into a my penis is bigger than your penis.

The massive amount of stock required as none of that stuff is JIT.

Problem is that there is absolutely no way to run a business this way.

Not mikhail, not ANYBODY.

The fantom shipping numbers, shipping one person's stuff repaired to another

person (different serial number) is just plain fraud.

Mikhail's works is anything but quality. After seeing pictures of the ASL stuff

i put both of them in the same boat. Not a chance would i buy any of that

junk.

[n_maher]

He's lost in a world of muck and mire and he is perpetuating the situation and making it worse by swapping other people's amps that have been recently sent in, to long time waiting customers who are starting to have squeaky wheels. He is promising free upgrades to quiet the restless, and those who have received their upgraded amps, with a different serial number than the original sent in, who know the difference between silver and gold, are reporting that the upgrades are simply not in the amp. This asks the question, "are people paying for upgrades that aren't in the "black box"?

Aaron,

Is there a well documented case of the serial number swap happening? To me that crosses over a much darker line between right and wrong. That's theft, plain and simple. It is not Mikhail's right to chose what to do with a product that someone else owns and certainly not his place to send it on to someone else. I'd feel differently if the items in question were merely returns rather than amps sent in for upgrades or repairs. Either way that's seriously shady and just plain awful to think about.

Mikhail recently told Asr that he'd built something like 300 ES1s, I'd like to see proof that he's built 10% of that claim knowing how long some around here have been waiting for 1 to simply be upgraded.

[deepak]

300 ES-1s? I have a hard time believing that too...

[kevin gilmore]

300 ES-1s? I have a hard time believing that too...

I know of a total of 9 units. 5 of which are having trouble. Of those, 2 are in

serious trouble. And 3 ES2 units. One of which is having trouble.

Just goes to show how much of a liar mikhail has become. Stax just barely makes

300 pairs of O2's a year and i doubt every one is going to be hooked up to an

ES1.

[tyrion]

Dusty, I think what KG is getting at is that the reason Mikhail had sold so many amps to people at HF is because of shills like Earl to name one. It is my great hope that there is a rule at HF that better defines the term shill. If the rule I have in mind had been enacted, I believe Earl would have been banned a long time ago. New members and long time members alike took his word as gospel and that gospel spread with little restraint.

What happens to SP is something that the market and perhaps a court or two will determine. I can't imagine anyone buying anything from him. I don't care if the amp sound like angels licking my ears (Jp's term) I wouldn't buy it, certainly not from him directly. There are just too many horror stories about late delivery, poor quality, amps sent back multiple times for repairs, expensive as hell upgrades, lousy resale value.

[spritzer]

I know of a total of 9 units. 5 of which are having trouble. Of those, 2 are in

serious trouble. And 3 ES2 units. One of which is having trouble.

Just goes to show how much of a liar mikhail has become. Stax just barely makes

300 pairs of O2's a year and i doubt every one is going to be hooked up to an

ES1.

A quick count gives me 12 ES-1's though some could be the same amp that changed hands. The issues are indeed serious and some of the amps have been sent in for repair without any work being done.

Considering that there were 500 SR-Ω's made in two years then 300 SR-007''s seems about right. According to Mikhail they can just stop making the 007t...

[guzziguy]

Dusty, I think what KG is getting at is that the reason Mikhail had sold so many amps to people at HF is because of shills like Earl to name one. It is my great hope that there is a rule at HF that better defines the term shill. If the rule I have in mind had been enacted, I believe Earl would have been banned a long time ago. New members and long time members alike took his word as gospel and that gospel spread with little restraint.

What happens to SP is something that the market and perhaps a court or two will determine. I can't imagine anyone buying anything from him. I don't care if the amp sound like angels licking my ears (Jp's term) I wouldn't buy it, certainly not from him directly. There are just too many horror stories about late delivery, poor quality, amps sent back multiple times for repairs, expensive as hell upgrades, lousy resale value.

The way I read KG's last post, he's blaming Ray's fanboys as a component of Mikhail's problems. He doesn't mention SP fanboys at all. I agree with KG that Ray's fanboys are a big problem on HF, but I don't see how they have anything to do with SP.

What's going on at SP at the moment is sad and Mikhail has nobody to blame but himself. However, I see lots of people are using SP's problems to air their own issues and get their kicks in.

[slwiser]

I did a quick google search on "ES-1" "headphone inventory" and URL limited to head-fi.org and get 15 returns with 7 noted being in the members profiles.

This is a neat why to search head-fi by the way.

[grawk]

I'd say what he's saying is ray's fanboys started the trend back up, and therefore mikhail felt the need to drive attention as well.

[guzziguy]

Exactly. He's assigning some amount of blame to Ray and his fanboys (and some other Ray/HF stuff) and suggest stifling the fanboys as a solution (or part of one) to avoid things like this in the future. In a free market, there is always pressure to differentiate your products from your competition's products. Each vendor has to take responsibility for their problems. While stifling fanboys may result in a better HF, it has nothing to do with SP's problems and won't do a thing to prevent future problems like this.

I also doubt that RSA fanboys had any effect at all on the multitude of SP product configurations. I think that can be better explained by Mikhail's joy of tinkering building custom amps rather than do the drudgery of building, producing and supporting common product lines. It's because of this that RSA and others are much better vendors than SP, not because of fanboys, etc.

I'm still hoping that SP cleans up their business act and survives this because I like having my ears licked. At CanJam, Mikhail told me that he no longer gives delivery dates, that the boss (Galina) now does that. I hope that it's the case and that it is a big step towards fixing the problems. Rather than Mikhail talking about these issues here and on HF, I think that it would be better if Galina did.

[blubliss]

At CanJam, Mikhail told me that he no longer gives delivery dates, that the boss (Galina) now does that. I hope that it's the case and that it is a big step towards fixing the problems. Rather than Mikhail talking about these issues here and on HF, I think that it would be better if Galina did.

Unfortunately this is not the case. Galina answered the phone once when I called and had nothing to say. Mikhail has given me at least 3 "this weeks" since Can Jam.

[Pars]

The way I read KG's last post, he's blaming Ray's fanboys as a component of Mikhail's problems. He doesn't mention SP fanboys at all. I agree with KG that Ray's fanboys are a big problem on HF, but I don't see how they have anything to do with SP.

What's going on at SP at the moment is sad and Mikhail has nobody to blame but himself. However, I see lots of people are using SP's problems to air their own issues and get their kicks in.

I think what KG is alluding to is that the perception created by Ray's fanboys makes Mikhail feel as though he needs to act; in this case by coming out with innumerable models which drives inventory ($$$ components) as well as loss of focus on existing problems (customer amps in for repair or builds).

[guzziguy]

Unfortunately this is not the case. Galina answered the phone once when I called and had nothing to say. Mikhail has given me at least 3 "this weeks" since Can Jam.

Too bad. I suspect that you'd do better to talk to Galina and insist on a schedule from her. Mikhail's schedules are worthless. If she can't or won't give you one, I don't have much hope for SP's future.

It is good to see amps going out now and, at least in the public responses, sounding great and satisfying the customer. However, if serial numbers are changing without the customer's permission, that is a much more serious problem and makes SP's survival almost impossible.

[guzziguy]

I think what KG is alluding to is that the perception created by Ray's fanboys makes Mikhail feel as though he needs to act; in this case by coming out with innumerable models which drives inventory ($$$ components) as well as loss of focus on existing problems (customer amps in for repair or builds).

Sorry, I must not have made myself clear. I agree that is what KG said, not alluded to. I think it's nonsense. I don't think that RSA fanboy's have anything to do with SP's problems. Mikhail and his inability or unwillingness to concentrate on the business side rather than the prototyping/customization side is what caused the problems. I don't see any way to blame RSA or its fanboys in any manner. I also don't see how stifling fanboyism will prevent something like this in the future.

[archosman]

New sticky...

**Buyer Beware!! Please read before buying a Singlepower Amp** - Head-Fi: Covering Headphones, Earphones and Portable Audio