Your most disappointing purchase or audition?

Howdy Audiolabyrinth, thank you kindly for your comments. Per your comparison. Amps & preamps are quite diff from cars. Cars rarely are tested after they've been produced: big production numbers with limited testing results in some lemons. Amps and preamps typically are thoroughly tested after they've been produced: small production numbers with testing should weed out the few lemons. Furthermore, to protect consumers, most states have automobile lemon laws. For audio components, consumers rely on the whims of manufacturers.

My Atmasphere amps and preamp were purchased new direct from the factory. The preamp with its reversed diodes, overheating resistors, and other issues was a lemon. Calling my Atmasphere monoblocks lemons is being kind. The matched amps were so different internally they appeared made by diff people in different years. In a scary fashion, each amp emitted profuse amounts of smoke. The smoking cure (not the cause as someone implied) was to replace, under the factory's direction, resistors in the amps with those of a different value. On-going problems were numerous. It's possible one amp was a prototype which would explain the vast differences in the matched amps.

As mentioned previously, during my ownership of these products, including the warranty period, the factory did little to rectify problems. Even the unmatched matched amps were deemed suitable, as I recall as appearance had no bearing on functionality.

Tubes108,
You may have given this information earlier in the thread, but I am curious about what year you bought the amps, because the company has been around for quite a while, and I am wondering if it was a "growing pains" thing, which of course would still be unacceptable.

Correct me if I'm wrong ,At one point in the history of Atmosphere didn't Ralph sell the business to which under the new management some key employees left under not so happy circumstances ?

your welcome tubes108.

Tubes108 is fabricating this whole thing. No product can work with diodes reversed and would never had made it out of the shop as it would not have even powered up properly! Anyone who knows electronics knows that. What he is suggesting is that we don't test our gear nor do we play it; anyone who knows electronics knows that such things would be foolhardy and would put a company out of business in a short time. We have been at it since 1976...

You will notice that over time his story has changed...

In an attempt to be proactive I emailed him about this issue a three days ago (having finally sorted out that it is possible through the audiogon feedback mechanism even when his moniker is not email enabled) to see if I could get to the bottom of this and have got no response other than this public attack. I'm not that hard to contact, I have one of the oldest email addresses in the world, and the phone number is 651-690-2246.

Here is the text of my email to Tubes108:

I finally sorted out that you can be contacted through your feedback panel

Hello Ian,

I also sorted out through the feedback panel that your first name might be Ian.

So- perhaps you could enlighten me about your experience. First, you could start with your name- as it might help in me recalling something about this. The problem I have been having with your posts is that usually I can recall something about the problem from my end- in this case I do not recall anything about it, which suggests that you may not have contacted us and informed us fully about the situation. Or- it may be that its made up. Since we never have stocked stranded wire for hookup purposes as explained in my posts, I have gone with the latter. So- care to discuss it?

Sincerely,

Ralph

Apparently, the answer is 'no'; IME if someone is unresponsive like this its because they don't have the guts to talk to me face to face; if these events had really happened that would have been no problem.