3M_Audio

Welcome!

Welcome Forrest!

Welcome!

I know exactly what you mean. Some Fluke stuff has just blown me away with the quality of construction and attention to detail. Some of the vintage HP stuff is also excellent.

Welcome Jeff

Perfect! I was going to ask if you'd be able to provide some pictures. Always interested in learning more about the manufacturing process.

VOCES8, Mass in B-Minor, "Et In Unum Dominum Jesum Christus". A stereo pair of Neumann TLM-170s in front of each vocal soloist, in addition to the mains pair and instrumental highlights. Spectacular with headphones or SH.

BB King - How Blue Can You Get?

Reviews don't help for many products, but do for others. For an amp or pre-amp, it's obviously all linked to the rest of my system, the environment, and the media I'm listening to. So the review doesn't really mean too much although the typically included nice photographs and some discussion of features and perhaps underlying technology is nice. I'm not too interested in a reviewer's opinion of how they like/dislike whatever they are listening to. But for other items a review would be very helpful. For example, a FM tuner (if anyone was still shopping for one) has a lot of specs that I'd love to see tested and verified against manufacturer specs. For some higher end items, I tend to purchase a brand based upon the manufacturer's reputation and reviews aren't very important. As @BobTFM35 pointed out, if it's a Carver component, I have no questions about the engineering, sonic quality, longevity, etc. I pretty quickly start looking at features.

Thanks for sharing. Nothing in there I really disagree with and I was glad to see he mentioned that speakers do, in fact, need some break-in. I've seen guys buy a driver, right out of the box run some tests to get the TS parameters, build a box, and then later wonder why the low-end seems off. I'd take a slight exception to the power conditioner comments but for a different reason than he talks about. With a well-designed power supply, you should be able to plug it directly into a wall socket, but given the state of the electrical grid, a little defensive action as @BobTFM35 suggested can really help - up to the point of having your protected equipment replaced if bad line power works its way into your house either naturally (lighting strike nearby) or by poor utility maintenance/service. For all my high-cost electrical items, I run a surge/noise power protector that includes equipment damage coverage. For standalone devices, I like the Tripp Lite Isobar for $40. Metal case, some noise filtering in addition to the usual varistors for surge protection. But it includes $10,000 of insurance coverage for the connected equipment. I've never had to personally file an insurance claim with Tripp Lite (Eaton) as our power quality is pretty good, but a couple of our customers at my previous company did and while it took a little while, they got paid for some fried equipment. As I recall, the incidents were all electrical storm related.

Factory Direct with a generous return policy is the way to go and I've done it that way since starting my own speaker company. It lets the manufacturer keep absolute quality and inventory control plus they have the personnel to actually answer customer pre-buy/post-buy questions.

Nice to hear! Sonic Holography is such a groundbreaking and legacy technology of Bob Carver that it seems like it should be in the product line (and maybe built-in to the RPM V12?) And while on the topic of some of Bob Carver's amazing IP, I think the Peak Unlimiter is another tech that would be worthwhile to consider including. Even though most recordings today are direct digital, a lot of it is still pretty aggressively compressed for broadcast or simply in anticipation of miserable playback environments. Plus, true audiophiles (who are likely purchasers of the new Carver products) are playing lots of legacy media which would benefit from this tech. I'm restoring a C-4000 right now and I'm more and more impressed with the PU in this unit. It's subtle but I like the effect. I haven't heard the Gundry filter in operation so can't really speak to it. But I have no problems at all with the original SH frequency response. Personally, I'm a solid-state fan and don't care about tubes or meters although I know many people like them for various reasons. But I can see the marketing benefit to have all current products visually coordinated.

Yes, I guess the complete name is "RPM V12"

That new RPM12 preamp looks pretty nice 🙂

AC/DC Hell's Bells

Nice connectors but pricey, indeed. Have you ever thought about using Neutrik speakON connectors? Although they are pretty universally used, I've personally just never been a fan of binding posts.

Welcome!

Welcome! Nice story on the TFM55

Welcome!

Welcome!

Listening to the Eagles 1994 'Hell Freezes Over' CD. Beautiful recording mostly in front of a small live audience.

Welcome! I'm also wrestling with a few C4000 issues right now but these are nicely designed and made units and worth the effort.

Thank you everyone for the kind welcomes - appreciate the friendliness of this group.

No, I'm up in Massachusetts a little north of Boston. There's quite a bit of Carver gear floating around this area but I don't recall seeing any of the car audio gear. And I don't generally search for this stuff on eBay although I'll look around a bit for the car audio stuff specifically as I'm interested to get more details about the pieces. I find many eBay sellers overly 'optimistic' (to be polite) in their assessment of condition and pricing . I do, however, find eBay useful for getting components from sellers that are parting out equipment. There's also the occasional new stock that is always a pleasant surprise. I just got a brand new power switch for this C4000 I'm working on from eBay. And I will definitely look for the VW with the 6 or 7 amps you mentioned - probably had a large alternator and some huge supply caps, too!

Thanks - I've actually got a couple pictures of that C4000 that I'm working on I'd like to upload. I'll post details into a more appropriate conference, but quickly I was actually finishing up and running through the service manual tests and started checking the various inputs and was finding channels dead - turns out the plastic that makes up the RCA input blocks is disintegrating (from age, I assume) and allowing the contacts to push out. I'm sure some others here have experienced that problem and I'll be interested to know what they did. I'm guessing those input blocks aren't available anywhere.