I just today got my EAR 859 amp serviced by the manufacturer, and wanted to share the experience, as there is much that is unusual. Not much to do with SD (perhaps) :)
The manufacturer is probably unique in that my 15 year-old 859 is still a current model. I mentioned this to the designer, Tim de Paravicini, today, and he just said 'well, if you design it right, you only need to do it once. Although some of the competition are now starting to catch up!' The switch and volume control were wearing and making poor contacts, so he replaced these, swapped some resistors, sorted my bad valve soldering, checked the valves, cleaned it all and took the mickey out of my valve cooler/dampers, all for under £100 including VAT. This on virtually no notice - I only checked yesterday whether he was free to sort it. It does now sound significantly better (which the wife noticed straight away, as ever!), probably due to the better volume pot and better contact, but it has always sounded fantastic. It's really nice to have equipment that you've had for almost half your life and feel no need to upgrade - I have not heard an amplifier that I think is _much_ better, and the cost of any improvements is so great as to make it unthinkable. So the Slim Devices angle questions are: - What is the life expectancy of SD products? New models every couple of years? Hopelessly outperformed after five years? Unserviceable after seven? Just the nature of the current tech? I am now upgrading my SB3 for a second time, and I've not even had it a year! Anyone got older equipment in their main system? Adam -- adamslim SB3 into Derek Shek d2, Shanling CDT-100, Rotel RT-990BX, Esoteric Audio Research 859, Living Voice Auditorium IIs, Nordost and Anti-cables http://www.last.fm/user/AdamSlim/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ adamslim's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7355 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=34591
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