Audio Research Owners Worried?

Anyone heavily invested in ARC gear who says "no" is either quite well-off or lying. 
When my Ref 150 SE blew up a year ago I tried to send it in for repairs and was told that they were so backed up with repairs that I would need to join a wait-list. I did and to this day they have never gotten back to me. In the meantime I took the amp in to a very talented local tech. He told me he needed a schematic. What followed was a pretty laughable see-saw of being told "yes, we will get you a schematic" with "who told you that? We don't provide schematics". ARC eventually sent one to my tech and he repaired my amp. It sounds great. But what if they had shut their doors?

Audio Research voluntarily agreed to assign its assets to a receiver, Lighthouse

Management Group, Inc, on April 4th. We want you to understand what that means and

how it affects our daily operations.

Audio Research has been operating since the assignment was filed almost four weeks

ago, ten days before the AXPONA show where our VP of Sales (Allan Haggar) worked

with our dealer Quintessence Audio, which featured a statement system including Ref 10,

Ref Phono10, and Ref 160M MkII amps.

Little has changed outwardly. Audio Research remains staffed with Greg and Evan

answering questions and assisting owners via email and on the phone; the service

department continues repairing products; production is building new products and

performing updates; our parts inventory has been good and we continue to receive parts

shipments; our sales department continues to accept product orders, and our shipping

department continues shipping parts and product orders along with completed service

units.

Dave Gordon gave our Philippine distributor a tour of the facilities on April 26, where he

and his wife were able to meet everyone, see everything going on, and listen to music in

the sound room. The tour had been scheduled in March and did not need to be

cancelled or postponed.

Trent Suggs was relieved of control of Audio Research and we have been working with

individuals to purchase the company: we expect to have a new owner very soon. There

will be continuity as production, engineering, purchasing, service, and critical personnel

will remain working for Audio Research. Including Warren Gehl.

We just turned 53 in April and we look forward to continuing to provide the finest high

performance audio products, service and support to our loyal customers, dealers and distributors. 

@fsonicsmith1 Sorry to hear of your issues with ARC. I do remember in the WZJ days, the amps came with a schematic as part of the instruction manual. I started a thread about schematics and the varying co-operation of companies to supply them, or not, a while back. The fact that some companies want to hold back on supplying the schematic to one of their customers is IMHO, somewhat of a disgrace. Yes, I understand and comprehend the reasoning behind that, but it doesn’t sit well with me!

I own all Audio Research Reference gear. I am not worried in the least. If I was thinking about buying another piece of ARC gear I would buy it immediately. I have never had a failure in owning one or more components over 40 years.

Not worried. I’ve owned only ARC amps and pre-amps since ‘87. I currently own a Ref75SE and a LS28SE. I’ve always had an excellent (albeit expensive) experiences with ARC service and ARC authorized service centers. 

I think it’s very likely that they will continue in some form or another. I might not buy any more gear from them but there’s a lot of money to be made on the service side. I’m confident that service will continue even if it’s only by the authorized service centers.

Anyone who is selling their ARC gear on this news probably did the same with their 401k when the marked tanked. Patience is a virtue.