I am just working to make hi-fi a better experience for
people
I meet
on their journey through life.
I lived in Sydney until I was 26 when I emigrated to Canberra.
I much preferred to live in a much smaller city than Sydney.
I like the open spaces, closeness to rural life, and the ease of getting around.
In about 1993 my career as a licensed building construction contractor was coming to a close because my knees began to fail to keep up with the creativity with bricks, concrete, lumber, and climbing up ladders.
At that time I had become very interested in my hobby of electronics while trying to improve my own sound system. It consisted of a cheap solid state receiver and speakers I'd built in 1977 and all designed mainly by guesswork. During some particularly arduous work on a roof my knees went on strike for 9 months, and I could not work hard at all. So I sought to train myself in some alternative method of earning a living so for a couple of years I learnt all I could about vacuum tube amps and speakers, so I could try to earn a living from what was a hobby.
By about 1994 I was competent enough to easily repair many tubed guitar amps and radios and I also learnt how to repair more difficult and complex solid state equipment. Since my expenses of life are mild, I have been able to earn a living without driving taxis to augment the initially low income.
The present.....
In 2006 I am still here to review how I survived the experience
of changing trades.
The
pay rate for audio work is terrible. While people are happy paying
someone $90 per hour fixing a new kitchen
or having a mechanics apprentice change the oil in their car they don't
like paying those rates to fix an old radio which might take 10 hours
to make sure
it will be usable for the next 50 years after
surviving the last 50 years.
I have become rather frugal in my lifestyle and very focused on what I am doing, and I found I much enjoyed the intellectual challenge with the end result that people are happy with what I build them or what I repair for them.
If nobody is pleased by what you do, your life has little value.
The philosophy?
One might ask, why have a philosophy? We are finite beings and
the universe is infinite so we cannot know everything
but we can share what we do know. Without wanting to be engaged in the
flow of the universe in a very small way
and to leave some slight legacy it
would be difficult to dream of a future or make any plans.
Philosophy and even logic are not things which lead us always to the
truth because either can be plain wrong and nonsensical.
I refuse to be completely serious about what I believe to be true but
so far I have yet to be convinced
of too many errors about my audio methods. I could always say I exist
to be proven wrong, and I don't mind
anyone trying to prove I am wrong, but they better be very convincing
with their attempts.
I am not alone in being unable to fully express in words exactly
what my philosophy might be,
certainly a lot of ideas are present; maybe you will realize them if
you read the website. I hope so.
But a philosophy could be simple, and could be like to a motto, "do it
right for thyself, and no other way."
But as we learn, many "other ways" present themselves in our minds, and
one should allow for the mind to consider
all the ideas that arise.
I have found that steady incremental improvements are possible
while comparing the stautus quo of one's achievements
against trials of techniques with likely betterment. If something new
is better, then it is adopted.
Marketing reasons for adopting some cheaper or lazier technique is
never my scene.
My business....
At the moment, May 2006, I mainly work alone to build new
amplifiers and
repair old ones. Since I find considerable demand for what I do I
engage a colleague who is happy to do nearly all the repairs to solid
state equipment. This allows me to focus on the the tube amp repairs
and hand
crafting of new tube amplifiers.
Sadly I have not sold too many new
speaker systems because people feel a need to buy speakers through
shops
where they can compare the sound quality with other brands. Little do
people realize that 50% of what they pay is the shop mark up, and 25%
is other costs and taxes.
When did a hi-fi shop ever add
anything to the sound quality?
I refuse to build speakers or amplifiers with lowest common
denominator quality like
the rest, then tell lies during marketing
exercizes to persuade people to
buy them. I don't like to suffer a financial loss while dealing with
the cut-throat
hi-fi shop owners.
I cannot afford to produce outstanding real quality and have my product
in a hi-fi shop on display with similarly pricing
to mass produced product imported mainly from Asia where the labour
costs are 1/50 of the Australian wages.
I'm not kidding. In 2006, AWE in Oz is $1,000 per week. The blokes in
China are lucky to get $2 per day.
Creating excellent hand crafted amplifiers and speakers requires more than just pure applied science, one needs to have a sixth sense about what works and does not work well and know that the listening experience depends on the sum of many interactive factors, not just a few applied simplistic notions. I do occasionally conduct AB tests to determine the merits of applied design ideas or the use of tubes or other plug in items. I like to hear what other people think about what I make before I decide a particular design method really is the best I can do.