TRL 595-how good is it?

Guido-

As intelligent as you clearly are (which we all appreciate as at least you are rationale); you have made a couple incorrect assumptions:

1) A complaint was filed with forum moderators before the "review". The entire issue is under review and monitoring by AA. No one wants this type of stuff to continue.
2) TRL and Paul Weitzel has been in business for decades. The mods are a small, but enjoyable and rewarding part of their business. I.E. They just shipped off a $140,000 amp to a customer. (That equals 254 of their mod jobs). So, "faith" from a Jack Seaton, although sincerely appreciated, matters little. The "reality" is these guys were doing quite well as a respected and successful audio mfr. before the internet, and are doing quite well with the internet as an additonal info resource available to the end user. They could frankly never do another mod and be just fine.

They are just doing their work and minding their own business. You never see Paul or Brian posting on these forums being critical of others. They have made no claims of ultimate superiority of their products. To paraphrase Paul's own words "If you like their product that is great as they are proud of their work; if you don't that is fine."

There is plenty of business out there, if earned the right way, for the APL's of the world and I am quite sure they do a fine mod and I have never said anything to the contrary.

Let's all just move on here and enjoy this hobby.

Thank you LKDOG. As I work for a large 80B-per-annum company founded in the late 19th century, which has done quite well before DARPANET, Internet, and all other nets, but then has seen it fit to harness the Internet to maximize its business, I meant my comment in a completely constructive way, without any negative connotation, nor implied derision of TRL, its products, its marketing strategy, its distribution, its services, and its customers. I regret my comment was so ill worded as to be misconstrued.

Of course, I am aware of TRL's production of impressive electronics having prices ranging all the way to the extravagant. Unfortunately I was not aware that I was in the process of discussing their entire production line in these posts. Sorry for my mistake.
Sadly, coming from the rather pragmatic training imparted to me by the kind Jesuit Fathers, more years ago than I care counting, I tend to extend my ability of having Faith, only to very few and rather narrow first principles, none regretably, currently included in any field of technology.
In the world of audio in particular, it has been my experience that past glory does not constitute a valid premise for eternal sound preeminance, through any and all products. To cite just two examples, Rowland and ARC are companies I dearly love, whose products even now I own with pride, that appear however to fall under this category.
Is TRL an exception to this admittedly sad apparent rule? If your faith tells you so, of course, do take due solace in your Truth.
As for myself, because of my admittedly limited world view, I will continue to stumble along, relying on the experiencial, and when my own experience is not feasible, on someone else's, including yours, LKDOG.

Guido-

Jesuits, huh?
And you survived, LOL!

I went to 12 years of Catholic schools myself and have worked the past 20 for the human service arm of the Catholic Church. I knew I liked your world view for some reason.
It' a Catholic thing-always hoping for that ultimate truth and symmetry yet always we know we will be searching for answers.

I apologize if I sounded defensive. My mistake.
As far as the TRL mod arm of their business-all I can say is that they are relentless in their passion for seeking great audio. I don't think they will get complacent.

They just came out with their first solid state integrated amp after decades of doing tube amps/preamps SOTA manufacturing (the ST-225).
The excitement that Paul and Brian have about it when they talk tells me they still have the fire.

When they talk about their digital mods-they are truly excited about making musical units, and the results in the Marantz units recently with their approach is really making them happy. Funny how this thread is on the Sony 595 which they do very few of now. It is a very very nice unit and wonderful value-but they will tell you themselves that there are other platforms they prefer at this point.It just happens to be the cheapest unit they do. (Actually, they do a Toshiba 3960 that is quite good also for even cheaper.)

So, I guess I also have "faith" if you will, that they are
still challenging themselves each day and love what they do.
But, it would come as no surprise to you what certain religious training and faith they have quite ingrained in them also:)

You from Catholic schools as well LKDOG? Isn't this a small world?
We should chat about our old school experiences sometimes offline! Unfortunately not much of it was of a musical nature: the only thing I recall was the music teacher was preaching to everyone that the NASA manned moon program was a fake and a CIA plot to thwart the social progress of the laboring Masses. That was 1969, of course! NO CDPs back then!

Well, at least we had a huge real pipe organ in our church that I got listen to every day in grade school.
The nuns could play.