Die-Hard Proceed Owners...

As I don't use a subwoofer the crossover changes are less important to me, but I would love to have access to PrologicII. Is this a major improvement on standard Prologic.
Unfortunately, I cannot find any AVP2 or upgrade kits in UK, and would prefer not to buy a US model with the resultant need for voltage change.
Certainly I remain enthralled with the sound quality from the standard AVP, both on film TV and music.

One question, on the demo unit I am trialling, all the lights on the buttons came on together suddenly last night. Whilst they went off again, I have now lost the first four digits of the display, which is a bit irritating/worrying. Has anyone experienced this?
Secondly, I have linked the AVP to the AMP5 using the PHAST ports, but this doesn't seem to result in the AVP controlling the AMP as I expected. Standby on the remote still only affects the AVP. Am I doing something wrong?
Peter

Ht4me - Any thoughts on getting the ball rolling on getting together & confronting Harman???

Petergc - Half my display went out on my AVP as well. When it popped, it put a divit in the display lense. Got my display replaced under warranty, The divit remains.

Go into the AVP menu, then "custom" and scroll down to make sure link is set to "on".

The easy part is sending the letter, the tougher part
is to get enough people to commit and send the letters.
I believe that they need to get buried with mail to have
a real effect. So we need to identify our goal, which
I believe should be to have the AVP2 get software updates
when the No40 gets them. I don't think we have any chance
of getting any thing for the PMDT though.

If all agree this is the objective, we now need to rally
the troups. It would be awesome if we could get Levinson
owners to request it too.

So how do we rally the troups?

As I see it, we need to gather the following and go from there.

1- Identify key contacts (and addresses) at Harman International and Harman specialty group. I have started a list here, but need to verify addresses and see if there are others we want to mail.

Wayne Morris
President
Harman Specialty Group,
3 Oak Park Dr.,
Bedford, MA 01730-1441.

Dr. Sidney Harman
Executive Chairman Harman International

Bernard Girod
Vice Chairman and CEO Harman International

Gregory Stapleton
President and COO Harman International

Frank Meredith
Executive VP and CFO Harman International

(Is this the corporate headquarters???)
Harman International Industries, Inc.
250 Crossways Park Drive
Woodbury, NY 11797

Erich Geiger
CTO and Chairman Harman/Becker
??(Becker Division) GmbH
??Postfach 74 22 60
??D-76303 Karlsbad, Germany

2- Put together a collection of press releases, Sales Bulletins and correspondence from Madrigal and Harman with all their promises and assurances which we can reference in our letters. We need to have names, dates and sources so we can sustantiate our claims. Some examples:

http://www.madrigal.com/proceed2002/avp.htm
http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?aamps&1049600224&read&keyw&zzproceed
http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/newsflash/madrigal-mark-levinson-4-2003.html

3- Identify a realistic list of requests (not pie in sky, but obtainable). Possible ideas...

-Provide software updates for the AVP2 for 2 or 3 years.
I doubt they have the resources to develop new hardware
for the AVP2, but they did claim the No.40's software
was easily ported to the AVP2. 2 or 3 years of updates
seems resonable to me.

-Provide an affordable upgrade/trade-in to the next
Media console (the No40 complimenting unit Wayne Morris
alluded to in his "important notice" on their website)
(AVP2 owners). They did tell us we would be able to
upgrade our AVP2s to Levinson's, didn't they?

-Provide an affordable upgrade/trade-in to the upcoming
Levinson DVD player (for PMDT owners). A lot of us have
already invested $6k to $7.5k (PVP option) to help them
debug and learn about DVDs.(they probably should just
trade us even(wishful thinking, probably pie in the sky?)).

-Other ideas here

4- Draft a template letter which we can all use as a starting point in drafting our letters to Harman. This template should include:

-expressing our displeasure about being dropped by them

-any and all horror stories of what we have endured as
loyal customers while they worked on fixing all their
bugs. And should include how much money you have
invested and how much down time you have suffered.

-mention how the resale value of our equipment has plummeted.

-List our requests and reference all the promises,
claims and assurences they have made.

-mention how this will not only make things right with
their Proceed customers, but will be a great PR move
in attracting new customers.

-Other ideas here...

5- Identify and solicit Levinson owners to write letters to Harman supporting us. I don't think they can afford to alienate them too.

6- I wonder what the dealers can do to asist us as well?

Let me know what you think. Once we refine this we can do a new post to get the letters rolling.

Cheers,

Ht4me - These are all good ideas. I'm in the midst of doing a little "key contacts" research. I'll let you know what I find.

Great idea about the gathering of press! Do you have a screen shot or hard copy of http://www.madrigal.com/proceed2002/avp.htm ? This link now just directs you to the Harman home page.

I don't think it would be a bad thing to aim a little high on the requests. Trade-in offers to Levinson gear is a good idea...assuming that Levinson continues to live up to it's name. Have you heard that Class A has hired 2 top Levinson engineers? Thier processor & DVD transport that are coming out are supposed to be hot stuff in a similar-to-Proceed price range. Though I think our investments, as you've said, are worth the effort.

Identifying Levinson/Proceed owners IS key. Where else on the internet do these guys hang out? One of my local dealers has completely washed their hands of anything Harman. They're a VERY customer oriented dealer & they took the lack of info & returning phone calls, when their customers wanted to know, as a sign of doom for Harman. They feel Harman lacks integrity & refuse to work with companies of such. My other dealer patiently hangs in there & has said they are trying to work with Harman on moving forward. Maybe my rep there can be of help.