General Asylum

Posted by John Marks (P) on June 21, 2003 at 11:21:58

In Reply to: Re: You can nominate low-priced gear for coverage in my column in Stereophile! posted by caa on June 21, 2003 at 10:47:14:

Thanks for your good-faith suggestions.

The problem is that Stereophile prints about 80,000 copies of each issue. That is not actually a problem it is pretty damn impressive.

Industry standards indicate that each issue will get seen by 2.5 people. OK. That's 200,000 people. Let's say that 20% read my column. 40,000 people. Let's say that just 2% of those people decide to investigate seriously a product I rave about. That's 800 inquiries.

If only 10% of those place orders, that's 80 Stereophile readers too many if the "passionate DIY'er" can't deliver the goods on time and working.

Let's not forget that we are talking about electricity here. How willing are you to have your house burn down, just to save fifty bucks on some audio gear?

And I am not joking about houses burning down. I can name two audio writers who narrowly escaped that fate because the importer of a tube amp replaced certain parts with parts of different values in order to "get more" out of the amp. It sounded great until its power supply burst into flames.

Now, the exception that proves the rule is the Dartzeel amp that I mention in this month's column and write up in the next. Yes, it is a one-man company. No, he is not a DIY'er; he is a graduate engineer who has subcontracted out things like casework and glasswork, and uses high-quality parts in novel designs, and the build quality is right up there with Nagra and JRDG. And the amp costs $10,000 plus. I feel and JA seems to agree that Dartzeel has enough external indicia of commitment and stability (he has more than $100,000 tied up in the NRE for boards and casework) that as long as I fully inform my readers, they can decide whether to risk that M. Delétraz may meet an untimely end, and his charming wife may not be good at electronics.

But if the product comes from a guy working on his kitchen table, in most cases it's gonna be Passover 'round here.

Thanks,

JOHN

• Delétraz Engineering, Geneva, Switzerland