Manley Labs prices?

[Silvan]

Originally Posted by boon

is your signature really that friggin huge?

Ya - the man's a friggin billboard.

[LARRYROSE]

Originally Posted by LARRYROSE [IMG]******//www.gearslutz.com/board/images/buttons/viewpost.gif[/IMG]
I STARTED MY STUDIO 11 YEARS AGO AND SHORTLLY AFTER THAT I PURCHASED A MANLEY VOX BOX. THE BEST PIECE OF GEAR ON THE PLANET PERIOD. I HAVE DONE HUNDREDS OF RECORDS INCLUDING A GRAMMY NOMINATED ONE AND TRACKED VOCALS THRU THAT SUCKER. I WAS LOOKING TO ADD MORE PRES TO MY STUDIO THE LAST FEW YEARS AND I HAVE PURCHASED 2 MORE LANGEVIN DUAL VOCAL COMBOS AND THE LANGEVIN DOUBLE PRE WITH EQ. WOULD LOVE SOME 2 BUS GEAR. MASSIVE PASSIVE AND VARIABLE MU ARE HIGH ON MY LIST, JUST WAITING FOR THE RIGHT TIME TO PULL THE TRIGGER. IN 10 YEARS MY VOXBOX HAS NEVER GONE DONE. NEVER........... WOULD LOVE TO BUY A SECOND VOX BOX FOR MY 2 BUS. WOULD LOVE TO HEAR MORE COMMENTS ON HOW THAT WORKS. DONT KNOCK ONE OF THE GREAT AMERICAN AUDIO COMPANIES!

WWW.ROSERECORDING.COM

Why are you SCREAMING!!! We can HEAR just fine.
[IMG]******//www.gearslutz.com/board/images/statusicon/user_offline.gif[/IMG] CANNOT AFFORD A NEW KEYBOARD- SPENT TOO MUCH ON THE MANLEY GEAR[IMG]******//www.gearslutz.com/board/images/buttons/report.post.gif[/IMG]

[burster1]

Originally Posted by Jonathan@FPA

Errrr... Hutch designed and brought the Voxbox, Slam, Massive Passive, Mic Maid, TNT, Backbone, Mixers, etc. and many others I am not mentioning.

I know Hutch designed a lot of the newer gear but, my post was more about the determination of David Manley. Much respect to EveAnna and Hutch but, the story goes back to before they were around. We are talking about a company named Manley right?

Originally Posted by David Manley

I tried to launch VTL here in 1981, tried to get a small production line going off prototypes I'd brought with me on a visit. But I had a disappointing would-be distributor then who let me down rather badly, and I almost gave up the project.

David Manley: Tubes, Logic, & Audiophile Sound | Stereophile.com

[Piedpiper]

There's a lot of interesting points in that article that would raise more than a few eyebrows here...

[Mike O]

Sometimes some of the "little" things that get lost on some people. Find me a better manual than some of Manley's. Take a look at the Slam user manual for example. I've bought some pretty expensive items; some came with nothing at all; others showed how to plug the XLRs and AC cord in but provided no actual usag information; and yet another (converters) that were so poorly organized and written as to require far too much time deciphering 'the code'. None came with anything like the SLAM or Massive Passive.

And I'll add my raised glass to Manley service. I bought my Slam used (sorry EveAnna). Anyone that has used a Slam knows that the meters are very flexible and by nature more complicated than say your average VU. Very strange (inconsistent) meter behavior, etc. upon receipt. Paul was a real treat to work with when it needed servicing. Right on the schedule he gave, great communication re: what was needed, etc. No BS anywhere to be found and delivered in perfect working order.

I WISH I could say the same about some other vendors repairing MUCH simpler devices. You have to wonder if some mfg's actually test what they 'fix'!

[burster1]

Originally Posted by Piedpiper

There's a lot of interesting points in that article that would raise more than a few eyebrows here...

Originally Posted by David Manley

But you and I both know very well that a lot of stuff in the recording chain would give an audiophile heart failure if he either saw its entrails or heard it. There are certain mixing consoles—you know their names, the most illustrious and expensive—I guarantee an audiophile would run screaming from his room if he had to spend an evening listening to his music all the way through one of those mixing console channels.

Yeah. I've been a fan of David since the late eighties after a friend bought some VTL amps. I bought my first Manley stuff in the mid nineties and have always admired there build and sound quality. I also consider the Variable-Mu that David designed based off of old school designs to be a modern classic. The way he incorporated the limiter circuit was genius.

[Piedpiper]

yup. and none of the "me too" promoting of tubes as euphonic; rather as having superior accuracy, when designed for such.

[Iron Man]

Great response EveAnna Manley!

Thank you to you and your team for delivering high-quality audio products, and for telling us more about your business.

[AwTAC]

As a new manufacturer, its disturbingly humbling to see in person the infrastructure that Manley has behind it. Frankly, its effectively mind blowing if you're tuned in to be impressed by this type of stuff.

All the gear we love unfortunately doesn't just grow on the gear tree you plant and get loaded onto a truck by faeries. It has to be created from flat pieces of metal and the process can be daunting.

You guys should take some time to read this again and ponder how any of this is possible from a single American manufacturer bringing you ahem, audio equipment in 2011. Then add in the fact that the audio equipment they are making in house is of the highest quality you can get...

Perhaps its tragic that not everyone can appreciate the passion and attention it takes to pull off what is detailed below but its very, very real and really awe inspiring.

Originally Posted by EveAnna Manley

Whoa! delasoul, your posts are way off, my friend! As in, they contain very few facts! May I PLEASE correct your pile of misinformation? I can give you guys details down to the last 4K7 1/2W MF 1% resistor if you want to and you will get all facts with no lies or bull-o-ney from me.

The Manley Labs factory is indeed in Chino, California. We have about 12,000 sq ft of space (10,000 ft footprint building with about 2,000 2nd floor/mezzanine space, maybe more...) I own the industrial building, and the one next door. Our electronics manufacturing, metal finishing, light machining, assembly, PCB stuffing, transformer winding, quality control of components, subassemblies, and finished gear is all done here at our factory. We design and build specialized test equipment to qualify, grade, match, and sort vacuum tubes, Vactrols, pots, etc. We prep wire harnesses. We do our engraving, both mechanical and laser engraving. Anodizing and powdercoating is done within a few miles of the shop. We do the polishing and line-graining in our own machine shop. Silk-screening used to be done in-house but is now done at two other local So Cal suppliers. The actual PCB manufacture also used to be in-house but is now done by several other Southern Californian suppliers, but mostly still by our guy, Elias, who had run the division in my building since 1993. PCBs are hand-stuffed in-house by my workers. PCBs which are loaded by automated machinery are not done in-house as we do not own any automated insertion machinery or surface mount machinery. We scrapped our old wave solder machine last year as other more modern wave solder machines that other suppliers have can do a better job and do it more efficiently.

Milled faceplates and sheet metal punched chassis and lathe turned parts are all fabricated with a few miles of my factory. I take pride in supporting my local region and keeping Americans working.

All audio I/O mic and line transformers, chokes, and tube power amp output transformers are designed made at Manley Labs, save one CineMag part used in the DI, and a Lundahl part used in the SLAM!.

We have been building George Massenburg's GML equipment since 2001.

All the mechanical and electrical assembly is done in-house by American workers, many of whom are family and many of whom are of Mexican decent, if that matters to you. There are other So Cal manufacturing company-peers of mine whose assembly workers are largely Vietnamese, or Chinese, or Eastern European, if that matters to you. My workers are all legal American workers. Many years ago I helped several of them get legal and many of them have since become naturalized USA Citizens. We fluctuate between 35 to 40 workers at Manley Labs.

We did not fire a payroll person! We outsourced this task because Cindi (who was doing it) was completely overloaded in her job and we can use her skills better to communicate with our dealers to assist the sales effort as she is the one who handles the incoming orders. The external payroll processing system we are onto now is way more efficient than the antique way we were doing it before. Cindi is assisted by another office lady who mainly deals with accounts payables. We hired a third person for shipping document preparation and he works out in the shipping area with the guy that actually does the packing. So we are up +1 on office paper-pushers types, actually. We cannot be accused of being a top-heavy company, that's for sure.

Our staff engineers are augmented by specialists around the world. As we get into more complicated designs we need to find more specialized DSP people, programmers, more complicated PCB layout designers who are more knowledgeable about these particular things than we are. I have accepted this idea of targeted design outsourcing and we are building our design team this way to be able to execute more compelling and interesting products for the future using newer technologies. In-house, we geeks in the company stay plenty busy with customer tech support, solving engineering problems that creep up every day and even improving upon products we might have already been building for 20 years, but could make just that much better.

My payroll is more than 25% higher right now Year To Date than it was a year ago. My sales are also up almost that amount. We have also re-invested a lot into inventory this year and seem to never stop re-investing into infrastructure. We are having an excellent year as it turns out! But it seems we really work harder than ever. That's why when I read these posts of misinformation that un-do and actually harm all of our hard work I go crackers!

Please be careful not to disseminate hearsay as fact.

As for costing, you look inside any piece of our gear and you see METAL. Copper PCBs, metal in resistors, capacitors, even metals inside vacuum tubes. Heatsinks, chassis, lids, faceplates: all metal. Finishing plating of those chassis parts, with metal. Transformers made of copper, nickel, and steel. Solder. Copper wire. Gold plated brass on the Reference Gold Mic. Gold plated switch contacts, RCA jacks, and XLR connectors. Stainless steel and steel screws and hardware. Man, it is all METAL you are looking at.

And what have we seen with the price of all metals over the years? It is all much more expensive! Look at gold! Some parts are more than double what they were ten years ago.

Combine that with how much extra quality customers demand from us these days, how close tolerances or matching folks require from us and how hard that is to pull off in analog with 10% tolerance capacitors or 20% tolerance pots or whatever. We can only throw more time and expertise measuring and sorting and matching resistors and little parts to achieve as near-perfect results as we can. All those extra labor costs add up too. Not to mention, yes, higher costs of American labor of course.

Well, the boring fact is that the MSRP is determined straight from the build cost by a humble multiplier, one common to most of my peers' who also manufacture audio gear. The MSRP has to also accommodate the worldwide distribution network. So, if the cost to build this gear goes up, so does the price!

It is a big juggle doing what I do trying to please customers, employees, dealers, suppliers, peers, everyone. I do my best. Thank you for appreciating this.

[Killahurts]

Originally Posted by EveAnna Manley

Whoa! delasoul, your posts are way off, my friend! As in, they contain very few facts! May I PLEASE correct your pile of misinformation? I can give you guys details down to the last 4K7 1/2W MF 1% resistor if you want to and you will get all facts with no lies or bull-o-ney from me.

The Manley Labs factory is indeed in Chino, California. We have about 12,000 sq ft of space (10,000 ft footprint building with about 2,000 2nd floor/mezzanine space, maybe more...) I own the industrial building, and the one next door. Our electronics manufacturing, metal finishing, light machining, assembly, PCB stuffing, transformer winding, quality control of components, subassemblies, and finished gear is all done here at our factory. We design and build specialized test equipment to qualify, grade, match, and sort vacuum tubes, Vactrols, pots, etc. We prep wire harnesses. We do our engraving, both mechanical and laser engraving. Anodizing and powdercoating is done within a few miles of the shop. We do the polishing and line-graining in our own machine shop. Silk-screening used to be done in-house but is now done at two other local So Cal suppliers. The actual PCB manufacture also used to be in-house but is now done by several other Southern Californian suppliers, but mostly still by our guy, Elias, who had run the division in my building since 1993. PCBs are hand-stuffed in-house by my workers. PCBs which are loaded by automated machinery are not done in-house as we do not own any automated insertion machinery or surface mount machinery. We scrapped our old wave solder machine last year as other more modern wave solder machines that other suppliers have can do a better job and do it more efficiently.

Milled faceplates and sheet metal punched chassis and lathe turned parts are all fabricated with a few miles of my factory. I take pride in supporting my local region and keeping Americans working.

All audio I/O mic and line transformers, chokes, and tube power amp output transformers are designed made at Manley Labs, save one CineMag part used in the DI, and a Lundahl part used in the SLAM!.

We have been building George Massenburg's GML equipment since 2001.

All the mechanical and electrical assembly is done in-house by American workers, many of whom are family and many of whom are of Mexican decent, if that matters to you. There are other So Cal manufacturing company-peers of mine whose assembly workers are largely Vietnamese, or Chinese, or Eastern European, if that matters to you. My workers are all legal American workers. Many years ago I helped several of them get legal and many of them have since become naturalized USA Citizens. We fluctuate between 35 to 40 workers at Manley Labs.

We did not fire a payroll person! We outsourced this task because Cindi (who was doing it) was completely overloaded in her job and we can use her skills better to communicate with our dealers to assist the sales effort as she is the one who handles the incoming orders. The external payroll processing system we are onto now is way more efficient than the antique way we were doing it before. Cindi is assisted by another office lady who mainly deals with accounts payables. We hired a third person for shipping document preparation and he works out in the shipping area with the guy that actually does the packing. So we are up +1 on office paper-pushers types, actually. We cannot be accused of being a top-heavy company, that's for sure.

Our staff engineers are augmented by specialists around the world. As we get into more complicated designs we need to find more specialized DSP people, programmers, more complicated PCB layout designers who are more knowledgeable about these particular things than we are. I have accepted this idea of targeted design outsourcing and we are building our design team this way to be able to execute more compelling and interesting products for the future using newer technologies. In-house, we geeks in the company stay plenty busy with customer tech support, solving engineering problems that creep up every day and even improving upon products we might have already been building for 20 years, but could make just that much better.

My payroll is more than 25% higher right now Year To Date than it was a year ago. My sales are also up almost that amount. We have also re-invested a lot into inventory this year and seem to never stop re-investing into infrastructure. We are having an excellent year as it turns out! But it seems we really work harder than ever. That's why when I read these posts of misinformation that un-do and actually harm all of our hard work I go crackers!

Please be careful not to disseminate hearsay as fact.

As for costing, you look inside any piece of our gear and you see METAL. Copper PCBs, metal in resistors, capacitors, even metals inside vacuum tubes. Heatsinks, chassis, lids, faceplates: all metal. Finishing plating of those chassis parts, with metal. Transformers made of copper, nickel, and steel. Solder. Copper wire. Gold plated brass on the Reference Gold Mic. Gold plated switch contacts, RCA jacks, and XLR connectors. Stainless steel and steel screws and hardware. Man, it is all METAL you are looking at.

And what have we seen with the price of all metals over the years? It is all much more expensive! Look at gold! Some parts are more than double what they were ten years ago.

Combine that with how much extra quality customers demand from us these days, how close tolerances or matching folks require from us and how hard that is to pull off in analog with 10% tolerance capacitors or 20% tolerance pots or whatever. We can only throw more time and expertise measuring and sorting and matching resistors and little parts to achieve as near-perfect results as we can. All those extra labor costs add up too. Not to mention, yes, higher costs of American labor of course.

Well, the boring fact is that the MSRP is determined straight from the build cost by a humble multiplier, one common to most of my peers' who also manufacture audio gear. The MSRP has to also accommodate the worldwide distribution network. So, if the cost to build this gear goes up, so does the price!

It is a big juggle doing what I do trying to please customers, employees, dealers, suppliers, peers, everyone. I do my best. Thank you for appreciating this.

Thanks for this EveAnna!

After reading this, I have to say that the Variable Mu I'm trying out right now somehow appears.. well.. like a STEAL!

[hank alrich]

Originally Posted by thepilgrimsdream

I think they're channel strip prices are what kill me. Are they really a better value than say an api or neve?

If I thought the price of a piece of kit was going to kill me, I probably wouldn't buy it.

Manley makes stellar stuff. Get if you need it and can afford it. If neither applies, skip it.

[JonMiller]

Originally Posted by thepilgrimsdream

I think they're channel strip prices are what kill me. Are they really a better value than say an api or neve?

Better or Worse then Neve or API is not something that can really be determined by listening to the gear and I'm not one to talk about measurable specs.

But a Neve, API, and Manley Channel Strip all sound as different as a Vox AC 30, Fender Bassman and Marshall JCM 800.

All of which are awesome guitars, and non of which does what the other one does.

If my API pre-amps could do what my Neve clones do, I would have saved a bunch of money...

[ToneLux]

I've known EveAnna for more than 20 years, and though Dave started the company, his love for quality, tone and value are in a shadow compared to EveAnna's. Though some of the early designs of his were cool and innovating, they were never complete, and variations from one to the next was a problem, along with the poorly laid out boards and power supply issues like hum and stability. She started from the beginning, cleaning and stabilizing everything, and when Mr. commitment vanished, she was left with a company full of good possibilities in rubbles. In record time she and her team of rebels started cleaning up and fixing the existing lines, replacing older units that were sent back with various problems with new units, all at her own expense, because EveAnna only knew one way to do things. All while squeezing in a few new products. There is always a turning point where the past becomes the future, and she and I both remember that day like it was yesterday, where she made the decision, now that the past was cleansed, to never look back, with a commitment, to run, not walk to the future, and has been on that path ever since. The vigilance as to keeping things here, and supporting local suppliers has been an uphill battle to which has been won by her and the way her people have designed things. The addition of an uncountable number of new products in both the Pro Audio and Hi Fi fields is more than enough clear evidence that it's her, not anyone else that is Manley.

So In my opinion, EveAnna and the whole company has gone against the crowd, succeeded and kicked ass 10 fold without the need to take names because when you kick everyones ass, all you have to say is "all of them".

So keep that in mind when you feel the urge to dilute what she has accomplished and is still accomplishing.

For those that recognize the opposite, it's proof that you do know what you are talking about.

Paul Wolff