I Can't Quite Believe Its Been 25 Years...
- Thread starter GT
- Start date
Many Thanks. You're right! G T Audio has been going since 1986, so 36 years. Tron is just my manufacturing business.
Seeing all 4 of my daughters graduate with honours and masters degrees...
Mike Reed
pfm Member
In electronics, I hope! Congrat's on the Tron generation (in both senses).
Thanks Mike, I know Ian's question was aimed at the electronics but I just wanted to put things into prospective. OK Tron and electronics wise:
Exhibiting and being chosen to provide the electronics for Avantgarde Acoustic's room at the Frankfurt show for 5 years (1998 - 2002)
Exhibiting and being chosen to provide the electronics for Cessaro and TW Acustic Room at the Munich High end show for 3 years (2012 - 2014)
Featuring in the top Korean HiFi magazine and selling a 300B amplifier to the owner.
Having a lovely article written by Roland Kraft, Germanys top reviewer (Image HiFi) and often referred to as "Mr Tube" - article here. The article was translated by Holger Fromme, the owner of Avantgarde Acoustic.
There are many others but I'll stick to these for brevity.
Equipment wise
Without doubt the one piece, well two pieces actually, of equipment which are my proudest achievements are both at completely opposite ends of the market. The Convergence phono stage starting at £1000 is top as it's the cheapest product I make, therefore it had to meet much more stringent criteria. It had to be extremely good sound wise. It had to be easy to build. It had to be extremely low noise for a valve/tube phono stage and it had to be affordable, so many could experience some of the high end sound for significantly less money. It had to be built to extremely high standards, as well as to offer an upgrade path to make it sound even better. It was very challenging to meet all of this criteria, especially for the price.
The other is the Nemesis Preamplifier and the Nemesis Phono stage. Both these were built as cost no object designs and both are 2 box amplifiers. Having a free rein and a no compromise strategy was very liberating, as was the money exiting my wallet to build such devices. The phono stage for example has a power supply which weighs all up 35kgs. The other case which houses the audio circuit weighs 25kgs, so a total of 60Kgs (132 lbs or about 9.5 stone) all for just an MM phono stage! There is a lot of iron and copper in both chassis's, as in super high quality transformers. These also took the best part of 6 months to build...
Exhibiting and being chosen to provide the electronics for Avantgarde Acoustic's room at the Frankfurt show for 5 years (1998 - 2002)
Exhibiting and being chosen to provide the electronics for Cessaro and TW Acustic Room at the Munich High end show for 3 years (2012 - 2014)
Featuring in the top Korean HiFi magazine and selling a 300B amplifier to the owner.
Having a lovely article written by Roland Kraft, Germanys top reviewer (Image HiFi) and often referred to as "Mr Tube" - article here. The article was translated by Holger Fromme, the owner of Avantgarde Acoustic.
There are many others but I'll stick to these for brevity.
Equipment wise
Without doubt the one piece, well two pieces actually, of equipment which are my proudest achievements are both at completely opposite ends of the market. The Convergence phono stage starting at £1000 is top as it's the cheapest product I make, therefore it had to meet much more stringent criteria. It had to be extremely good sound wise. It had to be easy to build. It had to be extremely low noise for a valve/tube phono stage and it had to be affordable, so many could experience some of the high end sound for significantly less money. It had to be built to extremely high standards, as well as to offer an upgrade path to make it sound even better. It was very challenging to meet all of this criteria, especially for the price.
The other is the Nemesis Preamplifier and the Nemesis Phono stage. Both these were built as cost no object designs and both are 2 box amplifiers. Having a free rein and a no compromise strategy was very liberating, as was the money exiting my wallet to build such devices. The phono stage for example has a power supply which weighs all up 35kgs. The other case which houses the audio circuit weighs 25kgs, so a total of 60Kgs (132 lbs or about 9.5 stone) all for just an MM phono stage! There is a lot of iron and copper in both chassis's, as in super high quality transformers. These also took the best part of 6 months to build...
Ianp
pfm Member
Completely understand on the perspective Graham, family always comes first.
Lovely the hear the Convergence phono mentioned given one will be coming my way. There's something about owning a component from such a high end 'one man' range even if it's at, for want of a better term, entry level.
And selling directly makes this achievable too, I don't know the business and what the mark up would be if sold at retail, but I assume we'll in excess of half. That would place it out of my reach.
Don't get me wrong, the spend is still significant for me, but I decided that the purchase of one of these was a smart move. To be fair it is my 476th day of stopping smoking !
Anyway, congrats on the achievements
Lovely the hear the Convergence phono mentioned given one will be coming my way. There's something about owning a component from such a high end 'one man' range even if it's at, for want of a better term, entry level.
And selling directly makes this achievable too, I don't know the business and what the mark up would be if sold at retail, but I assume we'll in excess of half. That would place it out of my reach.
Don't get me wrong, the spend is still significant for me, but I decided that the purchase of one of these was a smart move. To be fair it is my 476th day of stopping smoking !
Anyway, congrats on the achievements
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Alex S
carbon based lifeform
Congratulations. I only have three.
Mike Reed
pfm Member
I only have one out of three and she was a very gradual graduate
Also, posts like these (524) make my job so worthwhile...
https://www.whatsbestforum.com/threads/avantgarde-horn-speakers.13714/post-827558
topoxforddoc
pfm Member
Well I am a very happy customer, having bought a Meteor preamp and a Voyager power amp. Totally silent with no circuit noise on my Avantgarde Duos. My custom goes back even longer as GT rebuilt my Quad Iis in the 1990s.