I think every good radio/tv repair shop can do this in france.
looking for an old experienced shop, the technician is happy about well-made devices like accuphase on his workbench.
Probably moving to Europe, how do I change my system?
- Thread starter LarryK
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looking for an old experienced shop, the technician is happy about well-made devices like accuphase on his workbench.
I think every good radio/tv repair shop can do this in france.
looking for an old experienced shop, the technician is happy about well-made devices like accuphase on his workbench.
Good to hear. I like to make people happy. I will probably make somebody's day.
With my Accuphase CD Player, which I have decided to sell, I had it repaired years ago. I shipped it to a guy and heard nothing for many months.
I wrote the technician. He said, what CD player? I thought, oh no. He said, don't panic, he had a UPS driver that would leave packages at random businesses close by. Sure enough, he found it next door. The business had stuck it on a shelf, lol.
Please don't ship devices arround the world, search in internet for local shop when you there.
Always speak to the people in the shop, then you'll get a feeling whether you've chosen the right one. Otherwise, look at the next one. Example: I once had a beautiful Marantz CD 94 in perfect condition. The servo board broke and I ship it to Phillips in Holland. It came back from Phillips with a completely scratched case. Since then, I haven't sent any devices anymore my tip.Any good technician can repair CD players. That's a lesson I learned.
That’s weird, if your machine says 230V and you were running 120V into it then you should be blowing fuses or transformer windings.
Why not keeping the system as is and running everything on a transformer? The US plugs are different, no possible confusion with 230Vac ones.
In apartments we have little control on the mains quality - you can't exclude that you will need some kind of mains conditioner.
why? someone has converted the device to 120 volts. Put a new powercable (iec) on it, used the other transformer winding internally. that is the correct way, unfortunately he forgot to note that on the back of the device.
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Yes, they forgot to change the label. That’s lucky for me, lol. I bought this unit in the states.
I think that is called grey market.
Or it was labeled wrong from the factory. (Unlikely IMO)
The bottom line is that a lot of equipment has all the transformer taps needed for most of the world.
To do otherwise would be line buying a tube amp for 16 ohm speakers and needing to sell it for 8 ohm speakers., and sell it again when going to 4 ohm speakers.
Great for the manufacture, I suppose.
Why grey market? Maybe someone bought the device in Europe and took it to the USA or bought it in Europe because it was cheaper. Yes, a transformer with multiple windings is more expensive for manufacturers and means a loss in profit margin.
Because it is grey market, as it was designed for a different market.
Where it was 1 person doing it, or a container full… It is the same thing.
Yeah ^that’s^ B.$.
As if I even give a damn about their profit margin, which is generally through the roof anyhow.
The stuff is routinely traded at 1/2 price within the industry, so half of the cost is direct dealer profit.
Anything that makes it harder to keep is just future profit protection.
Assume that the actual cost is maybe 1/4-1/3 of retail.
That needs to assume that R&D and intellectual costs get spread out over the run.
A lot of equipment has multiple taps.
If you are talking about 50 Hz motors versus 60Hz then you would have a point.
And by extension transformer saturation from a different frequency.
However for manufactures it has been easier to have universal motors, then 50 and 60 Hz motors.
(And battery tools as well as SMPS is the logical extension.
Stocking 4 transformer is probably more costly than 1 better (multi tap) transformer.
Half of the pieces of equipment I have had just required a 2 mile to to the local electronics place to have them redo the wiring for ~$70.
One of the most intelligently designed moving coil loudspeakers is made by Gradient in Europe (Denmark). They are expressly designed to take the room out of the sound field, and have several models. I use the Gradient Helsinki's in my bedroom. It works great up agains the back wall. The first time I heard it, my jaw literally dropped on the floor (this is high praise from someone who has owned high end loudspeakers for 40+ years). It received very positive reviews from TAS (Robert Greene) and Stereophile (Art Dudley).
What most speaker designers forget is that the room coloration is the biggest problem in loudspeaker design. You have to tackle that in an intelligent way, and not simply throw more cones in a larger box, as most moving coil loudspeaker designers tend to do. Fortunately, in electrostatic designs, which are what I typically listen to in my listening rooms, there is no lateral radiation, so they tend to be less affected by sidewalls. What Jorma Saalmi of Gradient did was to figure out how to design a cone loudspeaker that simply doesn't "see" the room. It works really well if you position it against the back wall.
There is no closed box cabinet, and the 12" woofer is on an open baffle at right angles to the forward direction. The midrange is housed in its own enclosure that is designed to have no back radiation. The tweeter is horn loaded and both the midrange and tweeter are angled upwards to minimize floor bounce. When you hear a good classical recording made in a concert hall, your room just disappears. It's an eerie sensation. By minimizing the first reflections (floor, side wall, back wall etc.), Jorma achieved a minor miracle.
Some caveats: don't expect thumping boomy bass -- if you crave that, you can always add a big subwoofer. It does not flatter poorly recorded material, and there is no false warmth from the cabinet, like Harbeth and other BBC derived designs. It's relatively small and is intended to sound like a loudspeaker in an anechoic chamber. It's a reminder that in loudspeaker design, as in every other engineering field, there is no substitute for original thinking. As Peter Walker said many decades ago, you design loudspeakers for "documentary reproduction", meaning you are trying to capture what the microphones caught in an actual concert hall. Having just attended a live concert by the Philadelphia orchestra, where peaks exceeded 100 dB even though I was a hundred feet or more away from the musicians, there is no thumping bass. When the bass drum kicks in, it is fast and the transient comes and goes in an instant, without the typical box overhang. That's very hard to reproduce in a typical listening room.
This week, I'm attending three concerts by the Vienna Philharmonic at Berkeley, where I will get a more detailed reminder of what music sounds like in an actual concert hall. That's what Gradient Loudspeakers are designed for. They don't get horn level dynamics, but they can go pretty loud. I tend to listen at lower volumes at home, so it doesn't bother me.
Last piece of advice: I buy loudspeakers only from companies that have a long track record of producing innovative designs. Anyone can throw cones in a box. It takes genius to figure out how to make moving coil loudspeakers sound something like a concert hall. You have to pay attention to room induced coloration, and not just the loudspeaker volume levels.
Definitely from Finland
Awesome speakers for "normal" to slightly larger size rooms.Similar threads
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