[Puma Cat]

Originally Posted by pitchperfect

Let me be a bit more direct then-

10 years? Unless you know something I don't, fill me in.

Luckily for us Ken is alive and well and able to repair any component.

Like the 'majors' as you mentioned Shindo also has substantial stock of components. Rest easy.

-Matt

Respectfully, Matt, I have to agree with Jeff (Tonepub) on this one. If, as Serge and Alberto say, that the gear will be good for 50,000 hours, will Ken still be around to replace of those, for example, one-of-a-kind, NOS, or ultra-rare unobtainable transformers with cloth leads when the parts do fail (which they eventually will, in some cases)

Also, where will Shindo owners be if, heaven forbid, Ken Shindo fell over from a heart attack or got smacked by a bus tomorrow? Yoshiaki Sugano-san, the founder of Koetsu, didn't live forever, and until his son Fumohiko got production running again, Koetsu was unavailable.

Take for example the owners of George Wright gear...he was hand-building gear with point to point wiring and using NOS or no longer available parts exactly as Ken Shindo is. Then, tragically, he fell over dead one weekend from a heart attack. I was in the a local store one day when a customer bought $3000 worth of Wright Audio gear. A month later, Wright was dead. Now there is no more Wright gear, no more Wright product service, and no way to source replacements for the unobtainium NOS parts; what's that poor customer supposed to do now?