R/E/P Community
R/E/P => R/E/P Archives => Brad Blackwood => Topic started by: Silvertone on May 09, 2010, 09:39:52 AM
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I've had my N802's for about seven years now. So I'm doing one of these Hollywood movies this week and the sub-sonics are crazy and at the tail end I notice a sound like VU meters clicking when they hit their limit... yet my VU's were only pushing +1 and the sound was only coming from the right side. Well I loop this little sonic wonder and start hunting... sure enough I hear the coil scraping on my lower woofer on the right side... bummer, don't know how it happened.
So I call Equity International (the B&W importers) and talk to Eric in the service department. He takes all the info (serial number, address, etc...), says to me well I see you've never called in anything on these before, we'll ship this out today and you'll have it by Monday. I'll cover it under warranty!
Now how do you argue with that! Seven years later and God knows what abuse i put them through... well really the only time I crank these puppies are at the end of the day for fun!
I once blew both my tweeters in my N805's due to a faulty circuit in a proto-type mastering console I was beta testing (last time I used good speakers at initial testing!) and B&W covered both of those for free as well after 2 years of owning them.
Great company and great service and I got to talk "off the record" to Eric about the Chord Amplifiers vs. Classe Amps that they now use.
Bottom line, the older N802's sound best with the original Chords, the new Diamond series sound better with the Classe (this is his personal opinion)... lot's of good information.
Thank you B&W!
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Bryston, Sadie and Weiss are also GREAT in the customer service departments and will go out of their way to help.
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Yeah, audiophile companies do stand behind their products!
Regards,
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I know most pro audio companies are great as well... Hell, I've had EVERY SINGLE PIECE OF MASTERING GEAR I OWN GO BACK TO THE MANUFACTURES FOR REPAIR OR BE REPLACED BY THEM (at least once, Cranesong STC-8, Buzz REQ2.2, Dangerous Monitor, Requisite L2M, GML9500, HEDD 192, Waves L2, Weiss DS1 Mk3 and my EQ1, Masterlink, Benchmark DAC-1, etc...)... but I'm talking "speakers" here.
Funny thing is when the vintage gear I own gets recapped/repaired and put back into service I don't think I've ever had one piece go down... hmmmm
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There are pieces of vintage equipment that are 40 years old that with some TLC can last and last. Look at Neumann microphones, Neumann cutting lathes, Fairchild 670 limiters, etc., etc. that are still in service and still doing their "thing" after all these years.
A good fiend of mine collects old radios dating back to the 1930's and after some thoughtful restoration still work as good as the day they left the factory. Good well designed electronic equipment can last for a lifetime and beyond.
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the right side of my rotel amp went down recently...fortunately for me, B+W/rotel/classe corporate HQ is 20 minutes out of town. i brought my amp in, the tech had it working again in about a minute, and then said "if you can hang out for a half hour, i'll clean it up and upgrade a few of the IC's for you." naturally i said sure, and while he worked on it, another guy gave me a tour of the place and kept me company. super nice guys! no charge, they didn't ask about the warranty, just took care of me. it was such a nice experience i was actually happy my amp went down.
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Most components and parts are just not made the same as they used to be!
Pretty much any of the really top notch components would cost most manufacturers too much for them to be able to build and sell their products at anything less than a small fortune.
For me, as soon as a piece of outboard goes out of warranty, I'll tear it apart and try to improve it, often replacing certain price sensitive components for way better ones.
I've never had a piece of outboard where I haven't been able to improve either it's reliability or it's sonic performance!
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Nice story Larry.
API distributor over here just sent me a replacement 2520 op-amp for my 2500. It arrived the day after I called. Had to send the (intermittently) defective one back but very pleased with the service.