I wonder if Tom Evans Audio realise how much damage they have done to their reputation by taking the action against Marks video ? They obviously dont realise the power of the TH-cam community, and anyone now searching the internet for their product will now be faced with all the comments about Mark having his video taken down.
Tom Evens probably asked you tube to take this video down because he doesn't want customers to realise they been ripped off by at least £20k. There was absolutely nothing in the build quality to suggest anything more than a hobby build.
I love the irony of how much more damage Mr. Evans has done by taking action against this video. And such a wonderful video it is, thanks for reuploading it for Mark!
I was very happy to republish Mark's video. I still can't work out why the poor chap got a copyright strike for his video. TH-cam found no copyright issues when I published it on my channel.
@@Matt_moran78I think it seems that Evans may have filed a copyright claim against Mark for the video. TH-cam will often just comply with claims rather than getting into a dispute about it.
So, Tom Evans has his obviously fragile ego shaken by a talented guy with a scope and tries to suppress a video. Already know what to think of him... Thanks for reuploading the video. Very informative a definitely worth the time!
Mark is a legend and just doing his job. There is no reason for Mr Evans to bully Mark for this repair. Mark is even acknowledging that it takes a long time to match components to get the best performance from this construction.
The issue is not so much with the electronic design. That's pretty standard and good, despite being sort of plagiarized. The biggest problem is with the shoddy build quality and secrecy. Plastic standoffs? OMG. Needing cardboard fillers?? COME ON! Sanding off part numbers? Now you're a conman. Spend a little extra effort and money to give that case a sturdy frame so the PCBs are fixed all around, a little more ffort to make it look nice, and Tom Evans would now have been famous instead infamous.
The heatsinks are bad also, they should have put large heatsinks boltet to the bottom plate and use real copper sheets instead of pcb boards, even better copper subchassis and cover.
I am glad this video is up again. Hard to believe that someone paid 20k+ for this thing. Mark did a marvelous job as always. 10c cap and some polishing. Awesome. 😊
Mark's experience and knowledge is priceless. He also runs a repair community via his website. He's mentoring many people so they all can do what he does.
Thanks for sticking up for Mark! I see more and more people uploading this video on Marks behalf.......and I love it! Lets really stick it to people like Tom Evans!
Thank you for hosting this great video that should never have been taken down. It popped up in my suggested videos so it must be getting noticed, excellent stuff!
Great video which should NEVER have been pulled by TH-cam as it doesn't come close to violating fair use standards anywhere. It was clearly an attempt to quash what was in affect an honest review.
I wouldn't necessarily say that Mark was reviewing the phono stages. To me he was doing a running commentary of his repair whilst making observations on his findings.
Thanks for sharing this since Mark can't anymore. He got Masterscrewed by Tom Evans Audio Design with that spurious copyright claim. They were just really upset he rather innocently exposed their Mastergroove's pre-amp as a highly overpriced Mastergoof.
It's great that you re-upped the video in support of Mark, and as a statement against the unfair take-down. With that said, you should at least provide a link-back to Mark's channel, and not just rely on people to search for him.
When he opened it I immediately said to my self, hmmmm, I wonder if a tantalum cap could be the problem... 😁 Nice to see that the video is online again!
Even Regas high end Aura MC phono stage costs £4400 not £25k. analogplanet did a Rega factory tour and on one part of it Roy Gandy and his engineers discussed their design for the phono stage and why they designed it that way.
For those curious about the dip-switches on the back, the best shot I could find was around 8:40. I notice all the switches are turned to off. It looks like the input lines are tapped off the back of the sockets, then simply go to this "switchboard" PCB, with perhaps an earth wire in the mix, also used as a phono ground. I wonder if it is just a bank of selected value surface-mount resistors or capacitors, and you dial up exactly how much you want to bleed off the signal to ground depending on the values selected, for some sort of signal termination or in order to attenuate and fine-tune the input levels or some such audiophile nonsense. I am not an engineer or circuit designer, and have no knowledge of any principles behind this, though I have built a few amplifier kits in my time. None of them had input dip-switches, and many were of similar complexity as this unit.
Looking at the schematic at 11:32, it is listed as a "cartridge load switch panel". It looks like I was somewhat right that it introduces an additional load to compensate for phono input signals.
Cartridge loading is pretty important and the principle is actually not audiophoolery. The default 47k loading was chosen as a good compromise back in the days. MMs are quite impacted by capacitive load, so one may need to compensate with a different resistive load, depending on the length and types of RCA cables used. MCs do not care about the capacitance (AFAIK), but they are impacted by the resistive loading alone. Some sound their best with a phono input impedance as low as 10x the cartridge output impedance. :)
As seen in many phono stages its about loading the cartridge properly and giving flexibility for using different makes of MC cartridges nithing to do with earth's
Thanks for reloading this Matt. I watched it the first time around. I'm just disappointed Mark didn't open up that HUGE power supply block. I'd love to see the workmanship (or lack of) inside that monster.
Well that copyright strike just caused me to watch this video twice, I am reasonably knowledgeable about hi fi and purchase a lot of kit. It has really helped me in my choices...
This is the fifth time I stumble on this video. I have already watched it in full, but this time it reminded me to subscribe to Mend It Mark! Thanks. Take this, Algo. And take something else, Evans.
What a dreadful looking innards. Looks like something from Maplin.⚠️ So much stuff is damaged in transit but usually down to insufficient packaging. I would be putting that in a 2ft cubed box . Mend it Mark's channel is FANTASTIC, such skill ❤
The input offset voltage of the op-amp isnt too much of an issue as it is DC and can easily be blocked by AC coupling the stage (using a capacitor). Careful section of the coupling capacitor value can also assist with low-frequency roll-off, which is quite important - especially with vinyl sources. There are other, more important parameters to consider when selecting an op-amp for audio circuits such as slew rate, gain/bandwidth product and of course noise figure (although it should be noted that resistors introduce noise as well). Nevertheless, Mend It Mark has done a great job. 👌
This is like the 47 Labs Gaincard amp. It sounded great but It was all hyped up, and seriously expensive but the internal components were found to be extremely basic and very 'home made'. Now people are making 'Gainclones' that are as good, if not better than the original, albeit with slightly different chips. I don't think too many people are questioning the audio quality from this unit. There are components of it that are well thought out and designed, but perhaps the overall build quality is not inline with the the price tag. It does really prove that some audiophiles will buy just about any snake oil though.
at this price point, customers will test the equipment in situ for many weeks. If they get value out of the sound they will buy it. It's not snake oil if it gives value to the customer.
@@miff227 Maybe not in the true sense, because it actually works, but let's look realistically at what something like that is worth, not just what someone's prepared to pay for it due to exclusivity and perceived value. For them to say they only make 10 a year, creates the perception that there is something insanely special about this unit, when there isn't. It's mostly reference designs for generic op-amps and power supplies with some intelligent salt thrown in the mix, and some not so intelligent mechanical design. The average hobbyist could knock that up in a day or two, with only few hundred dollars worth of parts (sans the case). Even with the R&D that would have gone into this piece, there's no way the hardware justifies the price. You would have to argue that it'd hard to impossible to tell the difference between this and a well built $1k unit using a similar design. So often, the assumption with the audiophiles is that if it's expensive, it must be good. Ultimately, if Tom Evans was proud of his design, and it was truly bespoke unit with a justified price tag, the copywrite claim would not have been made.
What in this world can get this thing to cost that much? Years ago I was working with electronics and builded my own amplifiers, preamplifiers and RIIA's for phonos. I have NEVER charged any more than the real costs, but I also used standard boxes. Not that fancy since most people hide them away. Geeeez, but very well done Mark. You know your way to do things right.
I found the choice of acrylic to house the phono stage bizarre. As you can appreciate the phono stage could be dealing with signals in the micro volt range and could easily be swamped with EMI and RF interference. I suspect that is why most phono stage manufacturers use metal cases to shield the circuit from unwanted interference
Mark was unbelievably polite about the unit, which makes the whole debacle all the more bizarre. Personally, the preamp seems to have missed some critical aspects. There's a obvious lack of screening, both cables and boards, with nine from the plastic case. We never did find out about those DIP switches either.
I don't know why the designer decided to use a plastic case. The industry standard for a phono stage is to use a metal case to screen the low level signals from interference I.e it acts like a Faraday cage.
10:30-13:30 and 15:15-15:20 are where the re-created design document is leafed through page by page on screen. At 17:06, moreover, you can see how the exact position of each component and the precise shape of the board is diagrammed in the document.
Guy is literally an absolute genius when it comes to electronics. I repair vintage stereo equipment for fun as a hobby and I am nowhere and I repeat nowhere near as sophisticated as Mark is. I doubt I ever will be, but that's not the point the point is that he's an awesome dude who does fantastic work and surprisingly as verbose and seemingly boring as his videos might seem they're actually hugely entertaining and hugely watchable. It's honestly a shame that a company would go out of their way to try to attack him when honestly In the video I don't believe he said anything disparaging about the company or its products or questioned the validity of spending $30,000 on Hi-Fi gear or anything of the sort, he simply tried to repair it, which he did, and make it function again.
I've seen quite a few of Mark's videos and really appreciate his knowledge, skills and pleasant, easy-going demeanour. Having watched the original video, before it was removed, I was pretty shocked with what i saw of the Tom Evans phono stage, notwithstanding the repair Mark did, including an excellent fix to the acrylic casing. As a UK audiotwit and vinyl nutjob, I am well aware of Tom Evans and his products, which have been consistently well reviewed over the years; admittedly, I wasn't aware that any had a retail price of twenty-five-frigging-grand! Having become aware that Mark's video was taken down via Louis Rossman's video, I am really appalled by the actions of Tom Evans Audio Design and what clouds the skies even further is that, according to one of the posts under Louis's video, many of the circuits that T.E.A.D. uses are designs by other respected figures in the audio industry that he has appropriated for his own products and burnt many bridges in the process. Just really pulling for Mark, like everyone here, and really pleased to see so many voices coming together as one.
I think at min Tom should thank you for basically making a very nice service manual for him for FREE that must have been a TON of work! :) Mfg's used to supply service information with many products not so common anymore.
Good to see this again as a re-upload. Mark does great work for sure. The manufacturer is making it much worse for himself by doubling down. Very odd that Evans himself would send the amp to you, as if he's saying "nah-nah na-na-nah, you can't fix it" while sticking his tongue out.
my understanding is, the owner sent it to Evans for repair, it got extra damaged in shipping, Evans quoted some £1000s for repair, the customer asked Evans to send it to MendItMark.
I know nothing about electronics, but from looking at this thing, I'd say that a reasonably motivated person could build 10 of these in a week, if not a day.
@@Matt_moran78 Totally right. We all should subscribe to it - so this amplifier manufacturer's behavior only affects @MendItMark to get thousands of new subscriptions ;)
I've watched mend it marks channel from the near beginning always informative very professional and always very polite. I watched this video when he uploaded it and whilst watching it I came to the conclusion the Amp looked like something we used to build from a Heath Kit back in the seventy's. I did not see anything that could be copy righted in the original video or even watching it again. I think Tom Evans has just done a Gerald Ratner on himself
Thanks Matt, this is a great video from Mark, and the halfwit Tom Evans needs to be shown that bullies will never prosper, I knda think his sales are going to be taking a dive about now 🤣
At the prices that are quoted on the Tom Evans website I'm surprised that he has any sales at all. There is plenty of phono stage manufacturers out there such as Rega, Graham Slee, iFi, Cambridge Audio, Pro-ject etc and none of their high end phono stages cost as much as this.
My World Audio Design KLP1 Pre-amp - Thank You, Noel Keywood, Hi-Fi World - is so damn simple, I can service and repair it myself and it Dead Quiet in operation. It cost a fraction of the price of the TE Mastergroove Pre-amp; albeit 30 years ago. Still going strong and I've finally gotten around to having the Electrolytic Capacitors replaced, as it was getting a bit noisy. Now I just need to replace the two 6922 Valves and it will be perfect again. Who says Electronics needs to be complicated? Russ. Hampshire.
Thanks for the post. I was just curious as to what Mr Evans was trying to hide by his copyright strike. I see it was just an obscenely priced piece of equipment.
The pure irony that the amp was given to him by the manufacturer, saying it was irreparable. Mark repairs it with a 10c part, records/reports his findings and then the manufacturer files copyright against him. They knew full well that they were giving it to someone who repairs stuff like this for a living, and posts it on TH-cam - What the hell did they expect? Perhaps they expected the rubber feet to fool him and not even be able to get the unit open.
This whole story is weird... Customer sends amp to Evans for repair. Claims Evans wants too much money to fix it, but doesn't say how much. Has Evens mail the amp to Mend it Mark and claims Mark won't be able to fix it (hearsay). Mark receives the amp, and shipping company damaged it as shown in Mark's video. Mark, not only fixes the amp, but repairs the damage quite nicely. Was the amp damaged when shipped from owner to Evans, or Evans to Mark. Or was the amp damaged, then sent to Evans? We don't know. The strange thing is, why did Mark go through all the trouble and hours to create a proper schematic for this amp with nicely punch holes and bound into a neat booklet? An amp he will never see again nor need a schematic for. Mark laughs about how cheap plastic stand-offs were used, shows metal stand-offs in his drawer as what should have been used, yet, replaces all the broken plastic stand-offs with more cheap plastic stand-offs. Wouldn't you upgrade it for your customer?, you had the parts in stock. Customer too cheap to spend 3 dollars more? Or was there some other reason.... We see a short video and think, wow, that was quick and easy fix. But what we didn't see were the numerous hours Mark put into this amp, reverse engineering it, creating a manufacturers grade schematic, and fixing the "shipping" damage. How much did the amp owner have to pay Mark? or was this all theater to trash Tom Evans? I'm not here to judge what the value of the amp is. Obviously, the owner bought it. New or used, working or broken, we don't know the real story. Did the owner buy it used "as is" fully knowing one of the channels didn't work, and trying to scam his way into a cheap fix to possibly flip the amp for a profit? Only the owner and Mark know the true story. And there is obviously a lot left out of the story. Meanwhile, the hivemind crowd with no critical thinking, jumps on the bandwagon to trash Evans.
Wonderful job Mark. this thing has Waaaay too many useless tantalum caps in it. only good reason to use them is in signal path if you want to keep things to a super tight spec. completely un-necessary on the power rails, and runs the risk of shorting. as seen here. If I had way too much disposable income and actually bought one. I'd pull any Tantalum hugging a power rail and replace it with an electrolytic .
Ha Ha! Perhaps Tom Evans is more embarrassed that his design's build quality has been exposed. £25K for that?!?! What a mess. It looks like its been thrown together by a newbie. I made better hardware as a teenager (not necessarily circuit design) though. Paralleling op-amps is not a new technique but perhaps Mark didn't have to show the entire reverse engineered schematics......? However, if Tom is standing by his words about component matching etc, then its not going to dent sales as there are plenty of people willing to pay a premium. Keep up the channel, I love it! I find it great to watch as someone from the other side who designs electronics.
share this far and wide :)
I have a feeling Mr. Evans is now spending much of his time answering calls from rich but fairly pissed off people.
I wonder if Tom Evans Audio realise how much damage they have done to their reputation by taking the action against Marks video ? They obviously dont realise the power of the TH-cam community, and anyone now searching the internet for their product will now be faced with all the comments about Mark having his video taken down.
I have re-uploaded the video on my channel as a show of support for the Mend It Mark channel and for the right to repair.
@@NickT6630👍
👍
Louis Rossmann is also on the case, he says he will re-upload the video as well. Mark deserves a few hundred thousand more subs for this.
Tom Evens probably asked you tube to take this video down because he doesn't want customers to realise they been ripped off by at least £20k. There was absolutely nothing in the build quality to suggest anything more than a hobby build.
I love the irony of how much more damage Mr. Evans has done by taking action against this video. And such a wonderful video it is, thanks for reuploading it for Mark!
I was very happy to republish Mark's video. I still can't work out why the poor chap got a copyright strike for his video. TH-cam found no copyright issues when I published it on my channel.
@@Matt_moran78I think it seems that Evans may have filed a copyright claim against Mark for the video. TH-cam will often just comply with claims rather than getting into a dispute about it.
The true irony is that /this/ upload would technically deserve a copyright strike, but only from Mark.
This is a perfect example of the Streisand effect :D en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
@@nixxonnor Thank you! I had not head of this before. That is absolutely hilarious.
Commenting to boost the Streisand effect
Mark is amazing, that service manual is a work of art.
Fantastic repair from Mark again on this poorly built amp.
Good to see this back up on TH-cam!
Thanks Mr. Evans for fighting against this repair video! Now its going viral all over the internet. Even german reporters talk about it.
Thanks for reuploading this. This will teach Tom Evans not to be a bully...
So, Tom Evans has his obviously fragile ego shaken by a talented guy with a scope and tries to suppress a video. Already know what to think of him...
Thanks for reuploading the video. Very informative a definitely worth the time!
Mark is a legend and just doing his job. There is no reason for Mr Evans to bully Mark for this repair. Mark is even acknowledging that it takes a long time to match components to get the best performance from this construction.
The issue is not so much with the electronic design. That's pretty standard and good, despite being sort of plagiarized. The biggest problem is with the shoddy build quality and secrecy. Plastic standoffs? OMG. Needing cardboard fillers?? COME ON! Sanding off part numbers? Now you're a conman.
Spend a little extra effort and money to give that case a sturdy frame so the PCBs are fixed all around, a little more ffort to make it look nice, and Tom Evans would now have been famous instead infamous.
@@paulmichaelfreedman8334 It really does look like a build-it-yourself project from an 80s electronics magazine.
The heatsinks are bad also, they should have put large heatsinks boltet to the bottom plate and use real copper sheets instead of pcb boards, even better copper subchassis and cover.
Brilliant skills and experience.
I am glad this video is up again. Hard to believe that someone paid 20k+ for this thing. Mark did a marvelous job as always. 10c cap and some polishing. Awesome. 😊
Nice work, sir! It's great to see solidarity in abundance for Mark!
Mark's experience and knowledge is priceless. He also runs a repair community via his website. He's mentoring many people so they all can do what he does.
Thanks for sticking up for Mark! I see more and more people uploading this video on Marks behalf.......and I love it!
Lets really stick it to people like Tom Evans!
In my opinion the copyright strike against Mark's video was completely unfair, wrong and unwarranted.
@Matt_moran78 it certainly looks that way. Mark's response video was absolutely perfect. It was a perfect English rebuttal.
Mark is a real professional and a very nice man.
Great job!! How could TH-cam persecute a retired Santa Elf. He is just fixing the toys of the World! :-)
The cardboard shims for the panels had it for me! What a magnificent piece of audiofoolery. 🤣
Thank you for hosting this great video that should never have been taken down. It popped up in my suggested videos so it must be getting noticed, excellent stuff!
I love that all us electronics designers are coming out of the woodwork and giving our 2p worth in the comments!
I love this video 😊 My favorite video in TH-cam.
Great video which should NEVER have been pulled by TH-cam as it doesn't come close to violating fair use standards anywhere. It was clearly an attempt to quash what was in affect an honest review.
I wouldn't necessarily say that Mark was reviewing the phono stages. To me he was doing a running commentary of his repair whilst making observations on his findings.
Just another greedy cheapskate.
Thanks for sharing this since Mark can't anymore. He got Masterscrewed by Tom Evans Audio Design with that spurious copyright claim. They were just really upset he rather innocently exposed their Mastergroove's pre-amp as a highly overpriced Mastergoof.
well done ! The great audiophile Hifi Con exposed
Mark! Again you demonstrated your talent and craftsmanship. I always say: the more you use plumbing, the easier it is to clog up the drain!
It's great that you re-upped the video in support of Mark, and as a statement against the unfair take-down. With that said, you should at least provide a link-back to Mark's channel, and not just rely on people to search for him.
Tom Evans has clearly not heard of the Streisand Effect
Point taken I will get a link to Mark's channel sorted
Great to see this back up!
Dear oh dear Tom.
Thanks for re-uploading Mark's video and to Mark: Great repair you did! Wonderful video!
When he opened it I immediately said to my self, hmmmm, I wonder if a tantalum cap could be the problem... 😁
Nice to see that the video is online again!
One of the 300 tants?
@cambridgemart2075 Well actually kind of impressive that only one was faulty. 🙂
I hate to see tant caps across power supplies, they are not well suited to that use case.
I've never seen tantalum capacitors used in any audio circuits until now
Those stand-offs are horrible! Great job showing what an absolute rip off Tom Evans Mastergroove actually is. Snakeoil for eejits.
Even Regas high end Aura MC phono stage costs £4400 not £25k. analogplanet did a Rega factory tour and on one part of it Roy Gandy and his engineers discussed their design for the phono stage and why they designed it that way.
Keep on supporting Mend It Mark!!!!! 👍👍👍👍
Excellent, keep the re-uploads coming everyone
Thanks for reposting . Tom Evans not sleeping well for sure 😂
For those curious about the dip-switches on the back, the best shot I could find was around 8:40. I notice all the switches are turned to off. It looks like the input lines are tapped off the back of the sockets, then simply go to this "switchboard" PCB, with perhaps an earth wire in the mix, also used as a phono ground. I wonder if it is just a bank of selected value surface-mount resistors or capacitors, and you dial up exactly how much you want to bleed off the signal to ground depending on the values selected, for some sort of signal termination or in order to attenuate and fine-tune the input levels or some such audiophile nonsense. I am not an engineer or circuit designer, and have no knowledge of any principles behind this, though I have built a few amplifier kits in my time. None of them had input dip-switches, and many were of similar complexity as this unit.
Looking at the schematic at 11:32, it is listed as a "cartridge load switch panel". It looks like I was somewhat right that it introduces an additional load to compensate for phono input signals.
Cartridge loading is pretty important and the principle is actually not audiophoolery. The default 47k loading was chosen as a good compromise back in the days. MMs are quite impacted by capacitive load, so one may need to compensate with a different resistive load, depending on the length and types of RCA cables used. MCs do not care about the capacitance (AFAIK), but they are impacted by the resistive loading alone. Some sound their best with a phono input impedance as low as 10x the cartridge output impedance. :)
As seen in many phono stages its about loading the cartridge properly and giving flexibility for using different makes of MC cartridges nithing to do with earth's
things to remember about this story:
Mark is an absolute legend. He even fixed the bloody broken plastic!
Tom who?
Found out about this story via Louis Rossman. I've subscribed to Mark's channel and now I'm going to enjoy the video that started all the drama. 😂
Check out the rest of Marks stuff too :)
What an absurd price for this preamp. This was great to watch. If anything, the manufacturer should be thanking Mark.
Thanks for reloading this Matt. I watched it the first time around. I'm just disappointed Mark didn't open up that HUGE power supply block. I'd love to see the workmanship (or lack of) inside that monster.
Matt - thank you, thank you, thank you!! It is very important this is seen.
I think you have more quality control than the manufacturer. You should claim all the copyright. Great work thanks for sharing the video.
Well that copyright strike just caused me to watch this video twice, I am reasonably knowledgeable about hi fi and purchase a lot of kit. It has really helped me in my choices...
Me too, I saw the Louis Rossman video and found it on an internet archive site. I am watching it again and commenting to push the algorithm
Good for you, mark, Louis. Distribute this video as much as you can!
I always enjoy watching Marks videos several times, thank you for reuploading this one.
My pleasure!
I have a playlist that I have made of all Mend It Mark videos from the beginning, it should be available publicly on my channel.
This is the fifth time I stumble on this video. I have already watched it in full, but this time it reminded me to subscribe to Mend It Mark!
Thanks.
Take this, Algo.
And take something else, Evans.
Love it that Louis Rossmann is on top of this issue.
What a dreadful looking innards.
Looks like something from Maplin.⚠️
So much stuff is damaged in transit but usually down to insufficient packaging.
I would be putting that in a 2ft cubed box .
Mend it Mark's channel is FANTASTIC, such skill ❤
The input offset voltage of the op-amp isnt too much of an issue as it is DC and can easily be blocked by AC coupling the stage (using a capacitor). Careful section of the coupling capacitor value can also assist with low-frequency roll-off, which is quite important - especially with vinyl sources. There are other, more important parameters to consider when selecting an op-amp for audio circuits such as slew rate, gain/bandwidth product and of course noise figure (although it should be noted that resistors introduce noise as well). Nevertheless, Mend It Mark has done a great job. 👌
Correct. Input offset is normally only a concern for amplifying DC signals.
Thanks Matt.
Fantastic to see this video again! Thank you so much for re-uploading this one Matt.
You're welcome
And the truth prevails! Wonderful work, Mark! That’s why we all love you to bits. Cheers!
The second re-upload that was recommended by TH-cam. Literally right after I commented on the first one I saw, this was on the top row.
I have re-uploaded the video on my channel as a show of support for the Mend It Mark channel and for the right to repair.
This is like the 47 Labs Gaincard amp. It sounded great but It was all hyped up, and seriously expensive but the internal components were found to be extremely basic and very 'home made'. Now people are making 'Gainclones' that are as good, if not better than the original, albeit with slightly different chips. I don't think too many people are questioning the audio quality from this unit. There are components of it that are well thought out and designed, but perhaps the overall build quality is not inline with the the price tag. It does really prove that some audiophiles will buy just about any snake oil though.
at this price point, customers will test the equipment in situ for many weeks. If they get value out of the sound they will buy it. It's not snake oil if it gives value to the customer.
@@miff227 Maybe not in the true sense, because it actually works, but let's look realistically at what something like that is worth, not just what someone's prepared to pay for it due to exclusivity and perceived value. For them to say they only make 10 a year, creates the perception that there is something insanely special about this unit, when there isn't. It's mostly reference designs for generic op-amps and power supplies with some intelligent salt thrown in the mix, and some not so intelligent mechanical design. The average hobbyist could knock that up in a day or two, with only few hundred dollars worth of parts (sans the case). Even with the R&D that would have gone into this piece, there's no way the hardware justifies the price. You would have to argue that it'd hard to impossible to tell the difference between this and a well built $1k unit using a similar design. So often, the assumption with the audiophiles is that if it's expensive, it must be good. Ultimately, if Tom Evans was proud of his design, and it was truly bespoke unit with a justified price tag, the copywrite claim would not have been made.
Thanks man! Hope there’s 100 more youtubers who share this.
Nice one Matt. Great to see it back and available to a new and ever increasing audience.👍 Perfect. Cheers 🍺
What in this world can get this thing to cost that much? Years ago I was working with electronics and builded my own amplifiers, preamplifiers and RIIA's for phonos.
I have NEVER charged any more than the real costs, but I also used standard boxes.
Not that fancy since most people hide them away.
Geeeez, but very well done Mark. You know your way to do things right.
I found the choice of acrylic to house the phono stage bizarre. As you can appreciate the phono stage could be dealing with signals in the micro volt range and could easily be swamped with EMI and RF interference. I suspect that is why most phono stage manufacturers use metal cases to shield the circuit from unwanted interference
In fact, I have never heard of this preamplifier before. This case confirms once again that a lot of snake oil is sold in the hi-fi scene.
Audiophiles, lol.
Mark was unbelievably polite about the unit, which makes the whole debacle all the more bizarre.
Personally, the preamp seems to have missed some critical aspects. There's a obvious lack of screening, both cables and boards, with nine from the plastic case.
We never did find out about those DIP switches either.
That case speaks volumes about the designer.
I don't know why the designer decided to use a plastic case. The industry standard for a phono stage is to use a metal case to screen the low level signals from interference I.e it acts like a Faraday cage.
10:30-13:30 and 15:15-15:20 are where the re-created design document is leafed through page by page on screen. At 17:06, moreover, you can see how the exact position of each component and the precise shape of the board is diagrammed in the document.
Guy is literally an absolute genius when it comes to electronics. I repair vintage stereo equipment for fun as a hobby and I am nowhere and I repeat nowhere near as sophisticated as Mark is. I doubt I ever will be, but that's not the point the point is that he's an awesome dude who does fantastic work and surprisingly as verbose and seemingly boring as his videos might seem they're actually hugely entertaining and hugely watchable.
It's honestly a shame that a company would go out of their way to try to attack him when honestly In the video I don't believe he said anything disparaging about the company or its products or questioned the validity of spending $30,000 on Hi-Fi gear or anything of the sort, he simply tried to repair it, which he did, and make it function again.
I think that Mark's videos are fantastic. I am in awe when he makes replacement components for some of his repairs.
I've seen quite a few of Mark's videos and really appreciate his knowledge, skills and pleasant, easy-going demeanour.
Having watched the original video, before it was removed, I was pretty shocked with what i saw of the Tom Evans phono stage, notwithstanding the repair Mark did, including an excellent fix to the acrylic casing.
As a UK audiotwit and vinyl nutjob, I am well aware of Tom Evans and his products, which have been consistently well reviewed over the years; admittedly, I wasn't aware that any had a retail price of twenty-five-frigging-grand!
Having become aware that Mark's video was taken down via Louis Rossman's video, I am really appalled by the actions of Tom Evans Audio Design and what clouds the skies even further is that, according to one of the posts under Louis's video, many of the circuits that T.E.A.D. uses are designs by other respected figures in the audio industry that he has appropriated for his own products and burnt many bridges in the process.
Just really pulling for Mark, like everyone here, and really pleased to see so many voices coming together as one.
I think at min Tom should thank you for basically making a very nice service manual for him for FREE that must have been a TON of work! :)
Mfg's used to supply service information with many products not so common anymore.
I remember my old telly had the schematic stuck inside the cabinet.
Good to see this again as a re-upload. Mark does great work for sure. The manufacturer is making it much worse for himself by doubling down. Very odd that Evans himself would send the amp to you, as if he's saying "nah-nah na-na-nah, you can't fix it" while sticking his tongue out.
my understanding is, the owner sent it to Evans for repair, it got extra damaged in shipping, Evans quoted some £1000s for repair, the customer asked Evans to send it to MendItMark.
I know nothing about electronics, but from looking at this thing, I'd say that a reasonably motivated person could build 10 of these in a week, if not a day.
Thank you for re-uploading marks video. The Matrix should re-upload Evens!
Nice to see this video back up again Mark
Well done for re-uploading this great video 👍🏻
Good as new, well done Sir 😊
Mend It Mark did a great repair in his video. His TH-cam channel is well worth subscribing to
@@Matt_moran78 Totally right. We all should subscribe to it - so this amplifier manufacturer's behavior only affects @MendItMark to get thousands of new subscriptions ;)
Thank you, I watched this before it was banned. Nice to see it again. One for the algorithm.
Tom Evans is owned
I've watched mend it marks channel from the near beginning always informative very professional and always very polite. I watched this video when he uploaded it and whilst watching it I came to the conclusion the Amp looked like something we used to build from a Heath Kit back in the seventy's. I did not see anything that could be copy righted in the original video or even watching it again. I think Tom Evans has just done a Gerald Ratner on himself
Keep 'em coming, boys!!!!!!
Brilliant! This is gold!!!!
Thanks Matt, this is a great video from Mark, and the halfwit Tom Evans needs to be shown that bullies will never prosper, I knda think his sales are going to be taking a dive about now 🤣
At the prices that are quoted on the Tom Evans website I'm surprised that he has any sales at all. There is plenty of phono stage manufacturers out there such as Rega, Graham Slee, iFi, Cambridge Audio, Pro-ject etc and none of their high end phono stages cost as much as this.
Yesss it’s back! Well done Mark!
this isnt mark...
I'm just hosting Mark's video to support his channel
thank you to have reuploaded it.
Glad someone archived this video!
My World Audio Design KLP1 Pre-amp - Thank You, Noel Keywood, Hi-Fi World - is so damn simple, I can service and repair it myself and it Dead Quiet in operation. It cost a fraction of the price of the TE Mastergroove Pre-amp; albeit 30 years ago. Still going strong and I've finally gotten around to having the Electrolytic Capacitors replaced, as it was getting a bit noisy. Now I just need to replace the two 6922 Valves and it will be perfect again. Who says Electronics needs to be complicated? Russ. Hampshire.
Good for you for putting this back up!
Good evans Mr Evans,what a way to make a prize marrow of yourself. Well done sir. 🤫
Thanks for reuploading
Thanks for the post. I was just curious as to what Mr Evans was trying to hide by his copyright strike. I see it was just an obscenely priced piece of equipment.
I’ve no idea what Mark is telling me, but I do recognize he’s proving that these ultra “audiophile” manufacturers are full of shite.
This looks like the sort of thing I would hash together as a hobbyist!
25.000 Pounds for this crap? Looks much worse than my first project 40 years ago.
Mark did a great job!
You're a genius.Nice work Matt!
Thank mend it Mark please subscribe to his channel
Good to see the video is still alive
The pure irony that the amp was given to him by the manufacturer, saying it was irreparable. Mark repairs it with a 10c part, records/reports his findings and then the manufacturer files copyright against him. They knew full well that they were giving it to someone who repairs stuff like this for a living, and posts it on TH-cam - What the hell did they expect? Perhaps they expected the rubber feet to fool him and not even be able to get the unit open.
It's amazing how a lot of electronics fail because of an everyday cheap component or even something simpler like a cracked solder joint.
All true. Let the warning be "don't every underestimate our hero!"👍
Cheers 🍺
Does anybody remember the Streisand Effect?
I didn’t until you mentioned it
That's why I'm here.
Tom Evans audio does now 😆😆
Glad to see you got your video back up. The thing seems way over kill but at 62 I can't hear over 10 khz.
Correct i am 63 and can not hear above 10 khz. Ad age 15 i came to 20khz.
Streisand effect - if I ever saw one!
Thanks for uploading this.
This whole story is weird... Customer sends amp to Evans for repair. Claims Evans wants too much money to fix it, but doesn't say how much. Has Evens mail the amp to Mend it Mark and claims Mark won't be able to fix it (hearsay). Mark receives the amp, and shipping company damaged it as shown in Mark's video. Mark, not only fixes the amp, but repairs the damage quite nicely. Was the amp damaged when shipped from owner to Evans, or Evans to Mark. Or was the amp damaged, then sent to Evans? We don't know. The strange thing is, why did Mark go through all the trouble and hours to create a proper schematic for this amp with nicely punch holes and bound into a neat booklet? An amp he will never see again nor need a schematic for.
Mark laughs about how cheap plastic stand-offs were used, shows metal stand-offs in his drawer as what should have been used, yet, replaces all the broken plastic stand-offs with more cheap plastic stand-offs. Wouldn't you upgrade it for your customer?, you had the parts in stock. Customer too cheap to spend 3 dollars more? Or was there some other reason....
We see a short video and think, wow, that was quick and easy fix. But what we didn't see were the numerous hours Mark put into this amp, reverse engineering it, creating a manufacturers grade schematic, and fixing the "shipping" damage. How much did the amp owner have to pay Mark? or was this all theater to trash Tom Evans?
I'm not here to judge what the value of the amp is. Obviously, the owner bought it. New or used, working or broken, we don't know the real story. Did the owner buy it used "as is" fully knowing one of the channels didn't work, and trying to scam his way into a cheap fix to possibly flip the amp for a profit? Only the owner and Mark know the true story. And there is obviously a lot left out of the story.
Meanwhile, the hivemind crowd with no critical thinking, jumps on the bandwagon to trash Evans.
Wonderful job Mark. this thing has Waaaay too many useless tantalum caps in it. only good reason to use them is in signal path if you want to keep things to a super tight spec. completely un-necessary on the power rails, and runs the risk of shorting. as seen here.
If I had way too much disposable income and actually bought one. I'd pull any Tantalum hugging a power rail and replace it with an electrolytic .
I've never encountered any amplifier with tantalum capacitors in my experience. Audio manufacturers don't seem to use them I wonder why?
@@Matt_moran78 cost is the main reason. This is only partly why the thing is so expensive. Snake oil is a very rare as well.
Tom Evans - the audio industry’s answer to Stockton Rush
TH-cam provider solidarity! Let it roll!
Thanks for reuploading this 💪
Ha Ha! Perhaps Tom Evans is more embarrassed that his design's build quality has been exposed. £25K for that?!?! What a mess. It looks like its been thrown together by a newbie. I made better hardware as a teenager (not necessarily circuit design) though. Paralleling op-amps is not a new technique but perhaps Mark didn't have to show the entire reverse engineered schematics......? However, if Tom is standing by his words about component matching etc, then its not going to dent sales as there are plenty of people willing to pay a premium.
Keep up the channel, I love it! I find it great to watch as someone from the other side who designs electronics.
Well done! And I meant the repair not that shitty "product" Mr. Tom Evans!
Yeah it is back. I guess you beat the copyright strike. 😅😅😅😅😅