I don,t Understand ????

First off, I've been a happy and loyal customer of Syn. Res. for 4-5 years. I use their mid-priced ICs, cables, and power cords throughout my system with excellent results. In my above posts I was a little hard on what I consider to be an excellent high end company.

After reading these posts and making a couple myself, I called Syn. Res. and talked to Scott about shortening some Sig. No. 2 spkr cables from 8 ft. to 3-4 ft. and re-terminating. These are mid-priced cables, and the cost would be $200.-- that would be for 8 terminations, or $25. per spade. I consider that reasonable for getting a professional high quality job done, and well worth it to me.

In the course of discussing the above job, Scott asked me if I read Audiogons Forum, and he related the story about Evo845s experience. Quite frankly he said he made a mistake on his first calculation. He was answering about a dozen emails at the end of the day, and he goofed up. He also said that Des. Ref. is very thick and very difficult to terminate (unlike my Sig. No. 2s). They (Syn. Res.) were painfully aware of this thread that is going on here on Audiogon, and they want to do the right thing for their customers. BTW, shortening a Des. Ref. cable apparently takes several hours and a lot of skill and patience, and is not a routine request-- there are several wires involved.

I can understand Evo845s original complaint, but know more now that I've talked to Scott. BTW, Scott has done custom work for me in the past and is friendly and knowledgeable about Syn. Res. products, and prices were reasonable. I told him I was going to make a more favorabe post regarding Syn. Res.-- hope you gus don't stone me off the stage. Craig

It was a nice offer, unlike many other companies that will defend their right to be wrong to the bitter end. Audio Note, UK recently dropped the price of Black Gate capacitors which then initiated a stir as to whether the line was being discontinued, replaced, etc. Audio Note came back with the response that the line had been initially overpriced on the market and that on further examination they had decided to reduce the prices. This was a brutally honest statement (especially for those that purchased the items at the old prices) but it is also a statement that is hard to argue with as it rings of the truth.

.......that should be 'you guys', not gus-- geez.

It's been a few months since I posted something controversial and Carl's gone, dammit, so... quit whining! If they don't give you something for nothing you're going to take your ball and go home? Nobody forced you to spend ridiculous amounts of money on a questionable purchase. How can you be surprised when the wizard who conned you in the first place thinks he can get you, yet again.
It doesn't matter what sort of alchemy goes into the wire, it all starts and stops at the terminations you can buy at any parts house and attach with a little information and 50 bucks worth of tools. Garden hose, fire hose, so what. Why do you think nobody makes a banana or spade that accepts more than #10 wire? OK, maybe the water-filled stuff could be a problem, but the Parts Connection has WBT,CCMS, Kimber, etc connectors that are no more than $100 a set. The pure, unplated copper CCMS spades are $26! And then there's the bare wire school. You think if you cut the cord off at the termination yourself you'll let the magic escape?
I'm not questioning anyone's perception of the value of spending whatever you please on cables, if you hear a difference, go for it. What I am saying is that if an investment is important enough to take a major position, know it. We're not talkng about circuit design here, just connecting a piece of wire to a piece of metal. Nervous about cutting into a $2500 item? What's the downside? You can always send the wire and the $1800 to the manufacturer and say your dog chewed it.

Mistake or not, I'm also quite surprised & pleased by Synergistic's (Scott Novak) change-of-heart, so I'll make some additional favorable comments just as others have followed up above.
Although I still feel like their prices are insane, I am quite happy with Synergistic's products & in fact I need to buy some more. They make excellent cables; I have a lot of them, incl. some of the priciest. They say that it takes one cable-builder a full day's labor to make up some of these fancy interconnects. There are no economies-of-scale, because they just don't sell very much volume at these stratospheric prices. Example: I bought 1ea. of their best AC cable in early 2000; the serial # was #212. In fall 2000 I bought another Des. Ref. Sq'd AC, along with my new Master Control Center-II. That one was serial #248, so in 8 months they only sold 36 of these $2K monsters. It takes awhile to get them; they seem to be only custom-built to order.
A have to agree that their customer support is much better than some other manufacturers that I've attempted to deal with. I even talked with Mr. Denney myself one day; he ended up handling my inquiry because most everybody else was gone to CES. Ted gave me all the time that was needed to answer my questions (it was not a real long call) I was impressed.