New Bel Canto Gear at RMAF

Hello Dave,

"Also, Spectron probably needs to mature in the market a little longer before we really know how it stands up on important issues, like reliability, customer service, etc."

They are already there, in stratosphere...I am not sure if you know - Simon Thacher left Spectron and opened his own consulting business. He now works with David Elrod on speaker cables to serve high power amplifiers (sorry, I mean serve them well..) and a few weeks ago fall in love with Joule-Electra new super preamp so he works there as well.

Spectron had a great name three years ago before Simon joint company (reliability, customer support etc) and I bet they will do it after him even better.

Before, he was and here and there and did this and did that. Now (look at their web site/contact, please) they have a special sales guy (just saw his first amp at RMAF 2008 but a great seller I heard) - to build extensive dealer network and if you have any tehcnical question like how it works, extraordinarely rare repair or somethin' you have another phone - Toni, the wife of chief designer John Ulrick and if she does not know nobody does. She is his wife!

Reliability? Before Simon was sitting like a camel on their QA people and now they are free from his despotic manners and do QA as (and when) they wish.

And amplifiers are good. Nobody will ever hear from me a negative words about Spectron products!!! I still have my monoblocks

All The Best
Rafael

Simon has absolutely left the company. Tvad feel free to shoot me an email if you want to discuss this further.

Dear Tvad,

Simon did more then (most of) voicing of latest iteration of Spectron amp. Everybody who auditioned Spectron stereo vs monoblock knows enormous difference between both. Yet, in most of the manuals its written by Chief Designer, John Ulrick that "we do NOT recommend to use this amp in monoblock mode " and given some "smart engineering" reasons.

Simon brought Bybee upgrade(for half-year management did not know about it or knew but forgot to audition yet) , Simon brought v-cap upgrade, Obviously I don;t know proprietary things but he even forced them to bring ceramic silver fuses, discard garbage Chinese-like soldering and use only pure WBT (that is until now...). Simon insisted that each and every change in amplifier can be upgraded to the owners of old amplifiers including Musician II made centuries ago to preserve capital invested by customer in original unit and raise "the brand loyalty".

Before he left he suggested the business plan where he introduced Musician IV concept, in details, - very new amplifier - but only as continuation of Musician III amplifier so any owner of older amp can ship it and be upgraded to the latest generation.

I cannot describe the reasons why he left the company, company almost nobody heard about before he jointed and now praised by everybody - but it mist be good reasons and I would venture only one guess - owners wanted more profit, now, today, after lunch!

We will see what will happened with Joule-Electra (new preamp is coming to my house...), Elrod and other companies he now works with. And he is "just" retired electrical engineer (not even audio engineer) and former concert pianist... and its all is hobby for him (he gets paid of course but his life does not depend on it)

I also want to see that will happened with Spectron and not in three years but in three months! Today's Spectron is first class product for sure. However, nobody knowledgeable answers phone now, nor answers e-mail now - do they think they sell refrigerators to idiots? Will they keep quality, expensive parts like silver fuses, will they do QA on each shipped amp.... we will see.

Their luck is that their production engineer is very hard working fellow so the product is always be supported.

Hundreds of new companies raised and died over last few decades and greed was usually main reason (of failure not rise).

All The Best
Rafael

Gents, whilst this is, uhrn. . . 'fascinating', we may want to migrate any further Spectron meta discussion to an appropriate Spectron-related thread. G.