2. misc-audio
  3. 1230059880

John Potis - Rest in peace

Hello.

It is with a heavy heart that I come to tell the Audiogon community that John Potis has passed away last night. As I got to read his work at 6moons.com and Positive Feedback Online, I developed a strong appreciation for his reviews of high-end audio components. I came to feel he was perhaps the best writer in the high-end audio hobby currently. Not only did John exhibit the great skill of being able to balance the artistic and technical aspects of a component he was describing, he also did a bang up job in letting the reader know how it actually sounded.

He was a bull of a man, and it still seems impossible to me that the cancer took him down so quickly.

Though manufacturers/distributors and reviewers are supposed to keep a high wall between them, John and I developed a very close and deep friendship over the almost 2 years time that I came to know him. He was a devout family man, possessed a wicked sense of humor, was a great guy to hang out with, but most of all, he was a genuinely good and decent man who did his best each and every day.

Godspeed to his wife and two daughters,
Joe
trelja

Showing 4 responses by trelja

trelja OP
3,223 posts
 
Thanks to everyone for sharing their experiences regarding John.

To me, that was just the way he was. He loved corresponding with people, and had as much time as a person requested of him, whether he knew them or not. The overarching thing, as can be clearly seen, was that he never had anything to gain from any of this. He just wanted to be as helpful as he possibly could be to a person. He had very good insight into high-end audio, and we are all the richer for being able to have him share those opinions with us.

He was just a hell of a man, and a good friend. I think this is only going to get harder for me as time goes by...
trelja OP
3,223 posts
 
Thanks for all of the posts to this thread. I have been in contact with John's family, and it was an embolysm that took John down, not the cancer.

Obviously, his wife and daughters are still in a state of shock. What concerns me beyond getting them past this difficult time is the medium - long term, since John was the primary bread winner of the family, and their housing was a part of John's employment as chef at the country club they lived. To that end, I am hoping to organize a series of benefit auctions here on Audiogon for the benefit of the family. Hopefully, the site, along with a large number of industry people will lend their hands to help the family. More to come.

Still, none of this feels real to me...
trelja OP
3,223 posts
 
Let me just throw out there that Bill was also one of John's many friends. So, I completely understand and appreciate where he's coming from here.

Newbee and Mapman are two of my favorite Audiogoners, and I just hope you guys make peace with Bill, as his intentions are more than genuine and sincere in this instance. Let me fall on the sword and come right out and say that all of us who knew John are going to be more emotional than we normally appear in these threads so I suggest we agree to give a little bit wider a berth in accordance with that.
trelja OP
3,223 posts
 
Mapman, thanks for the clarification, I was scratching my head there for a minute, then again, English isn't my strong suit. Bill certainly has his fans here, me among them.

Newbee, I'm sorry I don't have the links, but the perfect illustration of how good (the best, IMHO) a reviewer John actually was would be the review of the Bryston 28SST(?) monoblock writeup he did for PFO. Compare and contrast that with Stereophile's Larry Greenhill, and you wonder who's review should have been published by Stereophile. In short, John's was night and day better. I was over his house to hear the Brystons, which he was in absolute love with, and they truly were mind blowing and thunderous with his Tidal loudspeakers, although I'll still take a tube amp, thank you. John was just like most of us, not a big money guy, someone who had to work a real job to support his family and make ends meet, and he simply could not afford to keep this pair, no matter how much he wanted to.
More to discover