Golborne Vintage Radio

For those who have not seen that Mark has had his video taken down for alleged copyright infringement, this is an update.

The take down has been pilloried on the web.
 
The owner of the £25,000 high end preamp, for which some very wild makers claims are made,  was aware of some ripple in the output. 
The maker, Tom Evans, either refused to repair, was unable to repair or the damage the unit sustained in the post made it unrepairable in his view.

So it was sent to Mark with the challenge that he would not be able to repair it.  Wrong, Mark fixed it, without any help, wrote up his own reverse engineering hand book and uploaded the repair to his website.

The video was soon taken down.

For those still interested the original video is available here,   https://archive.org/details/the-gbp-25-0...bp-fsfzi-i
 It is a cracking video, well worth watching and passing on to others.

Posted out of interest, no connection with Mark, Tom Evans or anyone else on You Tube.

Released here in the interes of fair play.
 Sam.

It was an interesting watch. I can imagine a look of horror if anyone wanted to do a cap replacement job on it but it goes to show that basic repair techniques well executed are all that are really needed. It does help to have a well stocked workshop though.

Thank you for the post.

Tracy

No pre-amp is worth £250, much less £25,000.

Exactly how does his video infringe copyright?

Haven't the makers heard of the Streisand effect?

P.S. Winter is coming.

I hadn't but I d-ducked it and it sounds to fit the Mark Maher/Tom Evans situation perfectly.

All seems very stupid, Tom Evans is being made to look very foolish and rightly so IMO.

Rather than accept that Mark's ability  far outclasses his, to resort to getting You Tube to take it down is  just plain silly.

Lots of Woo-Woo and little science on the Tom Evans website. Even the £600 for an "entry level" phono amp is crazy.

Caveat Emptor.

I didn't catch the original upload, but have been following with interest since I saw the take-down video from Mark at the weekend:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPIrCaeVtvI

Louis Rossmann did a video on it yesterday. Dave Jones (EEVBlog) commented on it, which has driven people to watch a copy of it on Odysee:

https://odysee.com/The-%C2%A325,000-Pre-...SR-mkIII:c

It's definitely helping to raise Mark's profile, which is no bad thing.

Having to reverse-engineering schematics is very common in hi-fi circles, especially for UK-built esoteric stuff. I do it all the time, but it never really gets beyond the paper sketch needed for repair. Taking the time to produce an electronic copy was impressive, but essentially an amusing retort to the "you'll never fix this" gauntlet. And partly for clicks, too. That's fine - I'd like to think I'd do the same in his shoes. But none of the schematics were shown in any detail in the video, so it doesn't seem like there's a valid claim for copyright. But who knows what the process is at Google? If a human checks it out, will they know enough to understand the nature of the claim?

Meant constructively, there were a few mistakes in his analysis of the section using parallel op-amps to reduce noise, but none of that gets in the way of the basic fault-finding. And it was basic. A thermal imaging camera helped him get there quicker, but it's a repair that could have been done using very basic equipment - just a multimeter and a current-limited bench power supply. I don't say that to to criticise Mark - rather, to encourage anyone who might be intimidated by that wall of gear.

Objectively, those plastic pillars were unforgivable. If we assume that he had valid reasons to avoid metal, then at least use the type with brass inserts pressed into each end - those are very good indeed. Yes, they're pricey, but there's enough headroom in the margin for that, surely?

No attempt at a defence of the manufacturer, but it is surprising how little of that £25k ends up in his pocket. Assuming he has the usual chain of distributors and retailers, as the website suggests, then the factor door price might be nearer to £7k. That's based on numbers I'm aware of for a small number of UK hi-fi manufacturers, so might not be accurate for this case. Of course, £7k sounds like an incredible sum of money for what you're getting, but with sales volumes that low and the very laborious construction techniques, he won't be retiring early!

We do need to tread a little carefully here as this thread is in the public-facing part of the forum - let's not say anything that might attract unwanted attention, please.

There's a Tom Evans email elsewhere that gives his side of the story.

Such as it is.

Just for balance, would you have a link to it?

This looks like it: https://pinkfishmedia.net/forum/threads/...st-5469218

Plenty of discussion about it on just that forum alone. There's a similarly long thread on diyaudio.com (haven't skimmed that one yet). So probably not much we can add to the discussion, but again, let's be mindful in what we say here.

Have the UK HiFi magazines been objective for 40+ years?

Also it's time that by law, schematics are included or available for free download. I remember even in late 1990s the Beko TVs included one in the box. But some HiFi gear makers world wide are notorious for not making any repair info available.