[Geoff Poulton]

Jim Williams: That's quite a personal tirade there, chap. Attempts to smear my reputation must be backed up with facts, not inuendo. Your motivation is quite suspect, however. It seems personal to me.

Well, I didn't think there was much innuendo about it, I thought it was pretty much to the point, I must apologise if that's way it came over.

My services do include customer satisfaction. That does require the customer contact me with ANY problems, they are always rectified here. You found 2 cases out of thousands. I'll take that ratio any day, thank you. Show me another company with that level of satisfaction, if you can.

If someone has their own gear modified, that's up to them, but these particular things were returned to the manufacturers having been purchased second hand. I only spoke to two manufacturers, and don't know how many times they had these problem, nor am I aware of other manufacturers, because I haven't spoken to them.

As to "messing up my circuits", that is something childish, said as if they still own them? Perhaps you can correct my mistakes in characterizing the parts used in the various DAV preamps through the years?

Better than my correcting you on your mistakes, I see that Mick Hinton has written to point out things you don't have right, and yet you have persisted in repeating the same things. If you're modifying something you could at least aquire a knowledge of the components before condemning them for one thing or another. And I can understand someone saying that circuits were being messed up, if they were finding their way back to them for putting back into working order, after all their name is on the product and it's their reputation at stake.

The fact is: if these manufacturers made gear that satisfied every purchaser, then they would never ever buy anything else again or do any work on it, ever. That is not the case, nor has it ever been. My experience from the golden age of analog recording was every piece of gear was worked on in the tech room. New pieces were modifed to suit the purpose of the end user, the owner, not the designer that sold it. Yes, I'm old enough to remember this, first hand as I was there. I wasn't born yesterday as you suggest. If you need more confirmation, look up the client list on my web site. I've been around for a while. Some of those folks are rather accomplished.
Maybe you are not comfortable having folks work on your gear, but to say that it is not needed is only your opinion.

As I said earlier, if people want their gear modifying that's up to them, but when they end up on ebay and are returned to the manufacturers, that's another thing. Your lists of clients is one thing, but consider what might be the list of clients for the two particular pieces of gear altered.
About aterations, I have not said 'it is not needed is my opinion', although I tend to buy the gear I like the sound of and leave it alone. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.......but I can appreciate that not everyone feels that way, which is up to them and no problem to me, as long as I am not buying it from them second hand and unaware of the modifications - problems or no problems.

There are thousands of modified pieces of gear out there working every day. If as you suggest there was an intrinsic problem with these mods, perhaps a few that own them can set you straight?

Modifications are ok, if modifications are what you want, there is no problem there?
But to condemn pieces of gear for the components they don't even contain, modify them, only to find they end up on ebay for some poor sucker to spend money on and have to return to the manufacturer is another matter. That sucker might be anyone of us on this site. If the modifications were made known and the gear working ok, then there's no problem, but how often would a seller tell you that what you're buying in the tin is not what is written on the the tin?
As for the DAV, for a while now they have been produced with sockets, so for those wishing to replace or experiment with I.C's they can, although for me the original choice of the designer is fine, and that way you still have a DAV.