The Headcase Stax thread

[Sechtdamon]

13 minutes ago, arnaud said:

Clearly, the best action plan here is for birgir to do his best and help this fellow actually burn through 10 pairs of sr009.

When you see 2kUSD cables popping for 4kUSD utopia phones and takers, that will be a nice change as the cable work here should be cheaper than 10 pairs of drivers, a good deal.

That is the smartest thing to do indeed, sir. But I bet the guy is already screening what we're planning.

 

6 minutes ago, Tinkerer said:

I rewired my 007 MK I. Like most things, you just have to not be scared of it and have steady hands. It was more of a pain in the butt to find a place that had a spare cable in stock and figure out how to disassemble them without instructions than the actual recabling. It's just 3 small gauge wires soldered to 3 small soldering pads on each driver. The only trick is to do it quick, because if you sit there and pump a lot of heat into a thin polymer diaphragm, that can end badly.

I was being sarcastic sir. My 207's cables are just fine But really thanks for quick guide. And I guess you need a dust free room to open one up. And I do not have one. My hotel room is filled with dusts, that I've to knock the door before I enter in.

But, even If I have the soldering skill that enough to work on it. I'd not dare to solder anything that close to diaphragm of the E-stats.

[bjarnetv]

2 minutes ago, Sechtdamon said:

But, even If I have the soldering skill that enough to work on it. I'd not dare to solder anything that close to diaphragm of the E-stats.

just cover it with some aluminum foil (old esl63 refurb trick)

[Sechtdamon]

Damn you, are you just pushing me to solder a cable to electrostatic hp? I sense evil here...

 

Kidding, sirs. Thanks for encouraging, really. I'm extremely busy with work, and It's going to be like that at least 3-4 months and have no room for soldering table in hotel room which I'm going to stay in for 3-4 months. I'll ask for your consultance when I ready the conditions.

[JimL]

2 hours ago, spritzer said:

Got this gem today... I mean we all know the cable makers are idiots but this is just priceless:

 

Well, you could start your reply:

 

"Dear Dumbass:"

But maybe that would give him a clue. 

[spritzer]

It was something along those lines...   

[Spork]

I'm curious as to why you guys consider cable makers to be idiots? (in general - this particular one leaves little doubt)

I'd understand if you said their customers were twits with more dollars than sense, but surely there is a tidy profit to be made and the makers are simply exploiting that. 

[johnwmclean]

Everbody knows the deal, unless they've been living under a rock for the last 20 years, I therefore have no qualms that cable makers are profiteering and exploiting.

Edited December 16, 2016 by johnwmclean

[Craig Sawyers]

12 hours ago, mypasswordis said:

Wow, really nice sleuthing. Maybe if you submit all the info you accumulated to Watchdog or the police in Leicester, they can do something. He'd be a pretty bad crook if his info was real, but the account number is the one thing that has to be right. He says the account is under his "wife" Vingel Patanao, so maybe that's something they can use to locate him as well.

I noticed the subtle bit of trolling he did with his "name" in the emails as well. He signs off as Bob through all of them, until he uses Rob in the last one.

OK - there is a UK National Fraud Reporting Service called ActionFraud. That acts as the first point of contact in reporting fraud, and it is then routed to the police force in the area in which the crime has been committed. http://www.actionfraud.police.uk/ . I'll phone them this morning, and find out how this is best reported - whether I can report it, or whether it has to be reported by the victims.

If it is possible to report this on behalf of multiple victims, it would sure help if I had as comprehensive list of victims as possible.

I'd need a steer on that from someone in the US to unpick this guy's trail of financial destruction. The UK police would ultimately need to phone up victims as part of evidence gathering.

[spritzer]

3 hours ago, Spork said:

I'm curious as to why you guys consider cable makers to be idiots? (in general - this particular one leaves little doubt)

I'd understand if you said their customers were twits with more dollars than sense, but surely there is a tidy profit to be made and the makers are simply exploiting that. 

Well I don't know where to start really.  It's not that there is profit to be made, it's how they go about doing it.  Now not all makers are bad, some sell good quality cables at good prices which will last for a long time.  This is usually accomplished by using pro type parts so instrument cables and pro connectors that have been made for decades. 

Then we have the other lot, often selling stuff at insane prices with more BS claims than Cavalli or MSB.  I mean seriously...how can a cable cost 5k$?  How could it possibly cost more to make than a complex amplifier with hundreds of parts?  This is just fraud, plain and simple.  MIT selling "impedance networks" which are just resistors from ground to hot in a molded plastic case. 

The whole point here is that through the sheer profit involved in peddling cables, they have created something which might seem to the casual buyer an actual legitimate part of the system.  Something which should not be skimped on for best performance.  Sure, it's better to have cables than not have any but will they make or break the system?  Fuck no!!  For me it is equally retarded as is tube rolling.  They play on the highly subjective nature of audio and the sheer ignorance/arrogance of the buyers.  There will be differences, if you switch a highly capacitive cable for one which isn't, there will be a difference.  Same with tubes, you switch out a fresh set with a "NOS" one with very little life left and even compromised vacuum and it will ofcourse be different.  Better though, that's more doubtful. 

This is the same as tubes vs. transistors, analog vs. digital or what ever people want to compare.  To even think things can be generalized like that shows an utter lack of understanding of the underlying mechanics at play.  Throw up something simple and then marvel at the differences, not really wanting know if one is an improvement or not. 

[Craig Sawyers]

OK - I have filed a report with Action Fraud. I spoke to someone rather than do it on-line because I needed to know how to do this under the circumstances of a UK criminal preying on US victims. 

The way this all works nationally (copied from their website) is:

City of London Police
The City of London Police is the national lead police force on fraud. It provides a central resource for counter-fraud policing and runs the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB) and Action Fraud.

National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB)
The NFIB is where cases of fraud are reported to and was created by the police to help them catch fraudsters. All confirmed reports of fraud from Action Fraud are passed on to the NFIB.

I have a case number. NFRC 161 201 671 640, against which victims can report their particular circumstances. So we need to encourage as many of those to go on-line and enter their data.

The process for adding victim data is as follows:

1. Generate a new fraud report http://www.actionfraud.police.uk/report-a-fraud-including-online-crime-questions

2. Use the reference number NFRC 161 201 671 640 (not sure where that is added, but I assume it is obvious at some point in the process)

3. The data entered by the victim will be associated with the data I supplied them

[johnwmclean]

Birgir, I generally agree, but as much as some companies are deceitful it takes an equally foolish person to make the purchase, particularly in regards to exotic expensive cables, you’d have to be pretty naive not to have known the controversies involved in todays marketplace.

[Torpedo]

Thank you, I'll tell my friend who was scammed

[kevin gilmore]

actually the MIT cables are more than a resistor to ground.  There is all that hot-glue. Dripping piles of hot-glue. And a couple of very small value caps.

the guy at double-helix cables clearly has absolutely no understanding of electrostatic anything. Unlikely to have ever opened a quad56 or quad63 because if he had he would know that there is a reason why the wires are so thick.

and so goes with his fancy silver wire in a high capacitance dielectric. Go to his website and count how many turns on the braiding and figure that the capacitance of his cable would be at least 3 times that of a stax cable.  and then the BS about not plating the silver with gold because gold "slows down the signal" and yet all his connectors are cheap gold plated crap. etc.

No one should help idiots like this mess up other peoples stuff.

Edited December 16, 2016 by kevin gilmore

[wink]

I'm waiting for the Bose-Einstein Condensate cable that slows down the electrons to a walking pace.

It means you can enjoy the music for longer............     

[Craig Sawyers]

Or high temperature superconducting power and speaker cable? http://www.amsc.com/documents/hts-cable-systems-for-ac-networks/ . Might be a problem in terminating it into Stax 'phones though 

[skullguise]

2 hours ago, Craig Sawyers said:

Or high temperature superconducting power and speaker cable? http://www.amsc.com/documents/hts-cable-systems-for-ac-networks/ . Might be a problem in terminating it into Stax 'phones though 

I think Patrick82 did this, didn't he once have a cable that he kept on or in ice?  It MUST have been superconducting.....or maybe it was his version of constant-cryo effect.

Edited December 16, 2016 by skullguise

[Dusty Chalk]

18 minutes ago, skullguise said:

I think Patrick82 did this, didn't he once have a cable that he kept on or in ice?  It MUST have been superconducting.....or maybe it was his version of constant-cryo effect.

You're making the mistake of taking seriously audiophile-ly anything Patrick did.  He wasn't using reason, he was an online performance artist.  He did things just to get reactions.

[Sechtdamon]

16 minutes ago, skullguise said:

I think Patrick82 did this, didn't he once have a cable that he kept on or in ice?  It MUST have been superconducting.....or maybe it was his version of constant-cryo effect.

I Literally sprayed my bear. Why not liquid hydrogen?

Fuck, I found a way to be rich:

Get some shitty overpriced cables, left them in liquid hydrogen for 2 hours, put a youtube video of your website that shows the process, sell the cables for 20k, profit.

[guzziguy]

1 hour ago, Dusty Chalk said:

You're making the mistake of taking seriously audiophile-ly anything Patrick did.  He wasn't using reason, he was an online performance artist.  He did things just to get reactions.

Dusty, I think that your SRR (Sarcasm Recognition Radar) might need some maintenance.

[mypasswordis]

I thought that was Dusty's intentional dead-pan humour. I try to put in some of my posts subtle things most people wouldn't find funny, and as expected, no one seems to notice. A trick I partially learned from Patrick82, actually, though his brand of humour is usually more brazen. 

[Dusty Chalk]

No, just sloppy writing. I don't really think he was taking Patrick seriously at all, I just couldn't figure out a better way to construct the sentence quickly. My apologies for not being clearer.

[kevin gilmore]

note:

liquid hydrogen is stupidly dangerous.  besides which you are unlikely to get anyone to sell it to you.

liquid nitrogen is better, and very cheap.  been there, done that many times, no difference can be detected. cryo'd cables,cd's,tubes, flowers,bananas...

liquid helium is even colder, and very expensive

[Audiojunkie]

4 minutes ago, kevin gilmore said:

note:

liquid hydrogen is stupidly dangerous.  besides which you are unlikely to get anyone to sell it to you.

liquid nitrogen is better, and very cheap.  been there, done that many times, no difference can be detected. cryo'd cables,cd's,tubes, flowers,bananas...

liquid helium is even colder, and very expensive

When did Cavalli release all of these amps? ;-)

[kevin gilmore]

the cavalli liquid helium definitely sounds a lot like daffy duck.

[Spork]

@spritzer - I guess you're going to tell me "proper" Hi-fi fuses don't improve sound either?