Kalvin Dahl

[Mikado463]

Originally Posted by The Lost Bears

Kalvin quit on a Friday, He was unhappy with the new system and all the extra work it entailed. That Monday I called the service department to order a part. The person answering the phone was less than competent. I don't think he could tie his shoes on his own. He told me I had to send an email for parts. For the next week the service did not answer the phone or emails. Then I finally got a reply to my email a week and a half later. I have to order parts through my dealer. That was what the email said. I never had to do this before. I have been ordering parts and dealing with Audio Research for the last 30 years.

Long gone are the days when Leonard was head of the service department and the service was truly excellent. Don't get me wrong, Kalvin was very good. But it has been a slow and steady decline. Try ordering a part for an older piece. They most likely won't have it.

Audio Research use to be like a family. If you owned a piece you were a member of the family. It did not matter if you bought it new or used. They did everything they could to keep every piece working and sounding as good as when it was new.

Almost the same thing happened over at Martin Logan when Jim Power exited, combined with the big corporate take over the little 'personal' things go buy the wayside unfortunately.

Originally Posted by The Lost Bears

I buy my tubes from Jim McShane. Great guy to deal with. He burns them in a bit before matching like ARC does. I just replaced the KT 120s in m Ref 110. The matching was dead on. Very little drift. I have not had to adjust the bias since my first check.

'Ditto', Jim is top notch IMO......