bdp24,
yeah, I agree. That personal touch that was present during Bill Johnson’s tenure is now gone forever with his passing. ARC now belongs to a conglomerate that has its eyes set on the bottom line (pretty much like Harman International & others who have swallowed famous brands of yester year). Sad. But maybe not a bad thing - I say this because if it were not for consolidation the brand might have died (like, say, Joule Electra. They made some wonderful equipment, were fun to interact with it but did not have an heir to the business.....).
What we saw in the tour was an operation of a "big" company; not the cottage industry company Bill J founded.
Also, like you wrote - the topic on AnalogPlanet was "FACTORY" tour. So, like you wrote, it lived up to its name..... ;-)
But i would like to know who in ARC is designing these new circuits? Is it the same old, same old circuit with modern components & an elevated price? OR, is there a real designer (like Bill J was) designing new components? For e.g., when Kondo-san (Kondo Audio Note) passed away there was a successor (Ashizawa Masaki), hand-groomed by Kondo-san to take-over ensuring that AN-Japan would continue in the same vein. I would like to know if Bill Johnson did something similar?
If this aspect would have covered in the factory tour, it would have been really nice. If I’m paying $20,000 for that new ARC power amp they showed being custom-built I’d sure like to know who designed it (& know that it was not some monkey nor that it was a bean-counter from Fine Sounds just looking at the bottom-line).
