E.A.R. Acute Reliability

Rja

Thanks very much for your recommendations for tube rolling on the Acute, but I decided to go with the ModWright.

Thank you all very much for your comments. After considerable thought, I have decided to go with Dan Wright's Modwright 9100ES with tube rectifier power supply. Dan has been very helpful and informative in his prompt responses to my emails.

I am sure that the EAR Acute sounds great, but I have too many doubts about its build quality/reliability. Having suffered through three transport failures in the past, the Modwright is more within my comfort zone. Among other things, Dan Wright is located in Washington state and I live in Vancouver, BC.

Robert Levi gave the EAR Acute an absolutely rave review in Positive Feedback. He subsequently did a follow-up review of the ModWright 9100ES with tube rectifier power supply and absolutely raved about it as well. Comparing it to the Acute, he observed that "used through a preamp there is no significant difference". My home system requires me to run my CD player through my ML 380S.

Tim de Paravicini is unquestionably a brilliant engineer, but I have heard some negative comments about his approach to customer service. His US distributor, OTOH, is supposed to be a terrific guy. Dan Wright is a great person to deal with and everything that I have read about him has been universally positive.

I purchased one of Dan's CES 2008 demo units which will be shipped to me directly from Las Vegas when the show is over. I can hardly wait.

And the remote for the Sony doesn't suck.

Jaybo

A reply to your comment is an ad?

Phaelon

Thanks for the good wishes. Yes, the anticipation is kind of exciting. And I haven't got any quality sound in the interim because my transport died.

I was a little disappointed to hear from Dan today that my unit will ship with GE 5687's rather than Tung Sols because he is out of stock of the latter. He suggested that I contact Brendan at Tube World about a pair of Tung Sol's.

I've also ordered some Tenderfeet from Herbie's Audio Labs. What interconnects are you planning on using?

Needlessly stirring up reliability concerns? I think not. I hope that you don't experience any problems but reliability is certainly a valid consideration, especially given some of the negative comments about EAR's build quality. Newbee's experience can hardly be described as "speculative".