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I heard that experimenting with the darker wood...may hold things up another week or so.
All, I am getting closer to getting the pre-amp sets completed. The pieces are small, and it would seem that this would be the easy stage. I have had to create jigs to provide repeatable processes for all of the pieces involved. There are many steps to getting them ready for finishing. Any imperfections in the wood will show without a high degree of care at this stage. I am also working on the balanaced power supply and power amplifier sets, along with other projects from other firms. I hope to have them ready for finish by this weekend, if everything goes well. If so it should not ne more than another week until they are returned to me.
All you Dodd preamp buyers have extraordinary patience. [/ quote]You are so right! Dodd customers do have an extraordinary amount of patience. My patience ran out months ago on this particular project! At the very begining I had so many problems with getting chassis that would all fit together correctly. That company has been doing my work forever, and they just couldn't seem to get it right. I got samples 4 times before I accepted it. This is the simplest project I have done in a long time, and I just can't seem to get it to come together. This one has been devistating to DODD AUDIO and it is going to take me some time to recover from it. It has also hurt the DODD nameand reputation, however I stand behind everything I have always said and I WILL deliver these preamps. Mike at Curly Woods just bit off more than he could handle, especially with a full time job on top of Curly Woods. It just plain took way too long to get just this part of the process done, and it still isn't finished! He didn't actually finish his full part of the project because of time. He was supposed to supply the finisher (Pete) with the wood pieces fully sanded and ready to finish.There are 190 pieces all together. He gave the wood to the finisher unsanded. Pete hired a guy to help him with the sanding process ( which he wasn't supposed to do). That quickly logged 90+ hours @ $45 hr, which I was not expecting. I have since then met Pete and have been to see him several times. Last Saturday I was over there and he had all of his tables covered with all of the dark woods. Come to find out that the dark woods are oily so they have to be sealed with an epoxy for this purpose. Thats a stage of work that I didn't know about. So far with the sanding and the epoxy finish this has extended the original time by 3 weeks. Pete called me wednesday and said that he had all of the dark wood sanded and ready for the first coat of laquer, but that he needed a sample from Bill, the laser engraver fellow. He need to know since he had never had to do this before if that laser was going to react to the epoxy. He said it could burn ,melt or bubble it up and he didn't want to laquer it all just to have it destroyed because of this unknown. He prepaired a sample to take to the engraver and when he got there he found out that Bill was in China untill the 3rd of Sept. Niether of us knew about this! More frustration now!! Can't do any thing until the 3rd! Mean while he is working on the finish process on the remotes. The remotes that i found out only 2 weeks ago that Mike did not find anyone to build them. I did all of them this past week and will be delivering them tomorrow to Pete. There is no way any of you can be nearly as fedup, confused and just plain pissed off! Any way to finish, when we get the sample from Bill, and hopefully all is ok, ( both Pete and I are pretty confident it will be fine) then Pete can spray the first coat of laquer. It isn't really laquer, it is the newest and best finish available at this time. Well it takes 3 days to fully cure then the first coat is sanded to 600 grit and then it is sprayed with the second and last coat. This takes another 3 days to cure and it is sanded out to 12-1500 grit, and finally it is hand polished to a glass like finish. I have seen his work and it is Beeeeaaaauuuutiful!!! At this point Pete is finished with his part and he passes it along to Bill, whom I have been told he is ready to go, programs ready to run product. I would expect a week from him. So that is what is happening. I am very sorry that such a simple product has pretty much ruined anything that Dodd stands for and recovering from it will be a long process. I do know that it's like I have always said and practiced, until this project. If you want it done right do it yourself.. Next run I will be able to start shipping inside of 60 days, now that all of the problems have been ironed out, and I will be doing the wood myself from now on, until I connect with China or Columbia to do my chassis for me. As I always have said I really appreciate your patience, without you guys i would be nothing. I WILL DELIVER!! I always do I don't think I will be able to ship now until the 3rd week of Sept.. I was originally expecting to ship at the end of this month.Gary
No disrespect to Gary Dodd, but you're paying for a lot of dealer mark-up in this preamp
Why not look at Welborne Labs Ultrapathbp tube/battery linestage?...for hundreds less and with the pedigree...
No disrespect to Welborne Labs, but it is not in the same league as this pre-amp. Gary's pre-amp is a strong contender for the best pre-amp ever made with cost no object. It really is that good.
Well first the best pre ever would have Balance inputs and outputs as well as single end.
Also lets be real here this isn't some new tube circuit that know one has ever done before all tube circuits come from the 30's,40, and 50's know matter who’s name is on it...
All the pre’s come with matched Amperex White Label 6922’s right?
then post a picture with the top open I want to see all the Caddock and Vishay $6.00 resistors and the finest Capacitors ever made for audio.
You know a lot of this could have been solved by not offering so different options on face plates just having three of four probably would have been fine.
[Also sound like there where too many hand in the pot and some fell short of what they committed too or didn’t realize what they were getting to.
Also if cost was no object China wouldn’t be involved.
Well first the best pre ever would have Balance inputs and outputs as well as single end. Or maybe you mean it’s the best single end pre ever. Dave