Swiss amps

"timex- it takes a licking but keeps on ticking..."
but it's not made by rolex, which, from what i've heard, does NOT take a licking and stops ticking even if handled with kid gloves.
i had a meta research dac made by goldmund which sounded (honestly) quite wonderful, but had to be modified since every time i had a power interruption or brown out, the dac became overwhelmed and had to be repaired. also, the 1st one i got did not sit properly on its 4 legs and rocked back and forth.
for $3500 i was not happy and returned it for another one. i also took home the matching transport for a couple of days. it had problems recognizing cd's and proved to be quite finicky.
it looked really neat with it's acrylic lid, gold cd clamp, and glossy black casework, with a spike in one corner for "mechanical grounding". but there was no way i could justify keeping it.
i do have to admit that i got a very good price when i traded in the dac to upgrade to levinson digital. i also had no problems getting a great price for the golmund lineal cable (digital) which was/is one of the best rca-type digital cables ever made. i think you just have to be very choosy, whether something is made in the USA or Romania,
and judge on a case by case basis.

Quality is tops, value stinks.

...i have had a goldmund 29m amp for 5 years and very happy with its' abilities..construction and reliability..i have a tubed preamp...first sound 'paramount' and the combination is truely superb...if i ever upgrade it will be another goldmund..you don't see many on a'gon for sale....

I owned a couple of Goldmund 28M amps.

The power module on one died after less than 2 months. The failure caused direct current to be fed to my speakers and destroyed the crossovers. The power module wasn't available from Goldmund even though the amp was current model. It took 4 months to get the part and endless phone conversations to get warrenty converage on the amp. Even though Goldmund admitted failure on the amp was their problem, they would not cover the cost of repairing the speakers. The speaker repair was 6K...

The sound was great, but the value and service was terrible. I would never own another Goldmund product.

...for the other side of the service senerio i thought i might have had a major problem with my 29m after applying a well known contact inhancer with the result being that my tweeter flammed out..i called goldmund usa and sent the amp to them and they very quickly went over the amp and even re-soldered everything with silver solder and sent it back with a new box..all within 10 days..could not have asked for more from a company....just the other side...