JA - I don’t know what to say! That is quite a kludge. The WAMM became a pinnacle of audiophile extravaganza. It (Wilson Audio Modular Monitor) launched an enterprise that audio history will be chewing on for a long time.
My personal perspective is the degree of difference between Wilson and Thiel, along with the huge success that Wilson achieved / and continues to achieve. Whereas Thiel spent considerable energy containing costs, shaving margins, internalizing capability, and working toward balance of all aspects of sound reproduction, Wilson embraced filling an affluent market niche where higher price was a fundamental advantage and some performance aspects could be ignored. Jim was especially flabbergasted how ’the market’ could forgive the WATT’s 0.33 ohm highly reactive impedance at 2kHz.
I have a vivid memory from the mid 80s when I attended Wilson’s introduction of their first generation WATT (Wilson Audio Tiny Tot), before Puppy came out. That opening demonstration was illuminating in so many ways. The Corian cabinets with lead damping were impressively inert. The sound was nowhere near flat - and the assembled audience was so avidly enthusiastic. David Wilson’s presentation included justification of the $5000+/pair price ($12K today) in terms of cost, including "more than $250 / cabinet for just the machining of the mineral loaded polymer baffle." Since I knew the material, I would have been embarrassed to claim $5 machining cost. And so on and so forth.
I’m not chewing sour grapes, merely expressing my personal astonishment of how the brand was embraced from the outset and over the ensuing decades. A NYC dealer once told me that "someone with a half million $ to spend needs to find a half million $ product." Another regaled me regarding how Wilson had done everything right.
Thanks for the question. I am reminded that we ordinary folks live in a very different world than some others. And there may be more of them than us judging by the direction the market has taken toward extremely expensive offerings. I might add that, with the exception of happenstance convention and dealer showroom sightings, I have never actually experienced Wilson music playback. Perhaps it’s wonderful beyond words, and I’m merely expressing my lack of sophistication.
For the love of music.
