PrimaLuna Dialogue Premium Preamplifier. DESTROYS SPEAKERS!!

Of course we are sorry that George had a problem with his preamps. PrimaLuna is well-known to have amongst the best build quality in the industry, regardless of price. This has been stated over and over by the most technically adept reviewers in the industry, and anybody who is pragmatic can study our quality in pictures and videos, and see for themselves. If you can point to a better built preamp for twice the price I would like to hear about it so I can applaud it.  

I did not call George once. I called him several times. And I was never arrogant. I was as nice and as apologetic as I could be. When I first heard about the problem I was on vacation in Europe and stopped everything to contact him as well as the dealer, and we jumped on this with engineers and technicians working both in the U.S. and in Holland. My wife Laura understood it was important, and I thank her for that.  I kept him updated, and because George had said more than once how much he loves the DiaLogue Premium I thought he wanted them back. So I didn’t just offer him a pair of tubes, but some expensive, vintage Mullards, Brimars, or Ciftes. He said it didn’t need it and liked it as-is.

We sell a lot of these, and if there were many problems everybody would hear about it. But we have not. Now we have a customer with two nearly identical systems, in the same home, with the exact same failure. Exact same. It was a small cap in the right channel, NOT the Mundorf coupling caps. We suspect an oscillation as my service tech here works for another brand that was faced with the same problem. But we will never know for sure. It’s unfortunate that any amp is able to pass DC as others have mentioned. Tube amps don’t. Most solid state amps don’t. But Bryston’s decisions are not my business.

In the meantime we are going to replace the caps in question in all the preamps we have in stock just in case there was a bad batch, and also made a small modification to the preamp. It was covered in-depth, and we considered any and every strange occurrence that could happen. 

FWIW George did not buy the power supply as he states. He told me Martin Logan warranted it. I will contact the factory about that, but I suspect they are fine with us.   Martin Logan has borrowed PrimaLuna from us to demonstrate their speaker’s at large national shows, and we’ve been very helpful to each other.   Last Tuesday a Martin Logan Executive bought a PrimaLuna DiaLogue Premium for his own system.  

By the way I’d like to thank Ralph Karsten from Atma-Sphere for his kind words. We live in times where people are very aggressive, and forum posts look like certain tweets I wish we didn't see today. 

When I speak to customers about quality, I tell them nobody builds a product like PrimaLuna …. except Atma-Sphere.   Look inside whatever product you are considering purchasing.

" nobody builds a product like PrimaLuna...except Atma-Sphere"
It's been a while since I heard a better joke.

Below is a quote from the review of our $2199 ProLogue Premium preamp.  Herb Reichert is both technically adept, and very experienced.  

"When I removed the ProLogue Premium’s bottom plate, I was instantly impressed by the quality of parts and labor I saw. I’ve serviced countless tube amps, including some of the world’s most expensive, and have never seen better crafted point-to-point wiring or more intelligent layout."

Herb Reichert, Stereophile June 2017

If on the other hand you think I'm joking about Atma-Sphere, just look at their products.  The handwork is beautiful.  And they sound great.  I have no problem giving complements where they are due. 

Well George, what do you have to say now? Let me guess; you will
continue to insist that it was all PL’s fault and not Bryston’s.

Truth is the PrimaLuna capacitor failed. We take responsibility for that ultimately. I’ve been doing this for 40 years guys, and I’m a realist.

Some failures cannot be explained. I just slammed a speaker company about a driver failure and went round and round as they did not want to warranty it, only to find out that the customer hooked up his REL subs wrong to his balanced differential power amps (and didn’t tell me). The result was a midrange driver that absolutely sounded blown. I mean bad.
My employee drove hours to his home, swapped the driver, same problem. Hooked up the sub correctly. Problem went away. I raised holy hell with the speaker company about this and now have to admit "Hey things happen" and I was wrong.

This preamp has been in production for over four years, and we have never had this part fail EVER with hundreds of units sold.  

It is built with better quality parts than any of its peers.  This failure was most likely due to the system or something in the home.  That's all there is to that.  Two preamps running into Bryston amps and Martin Logan speakers owned by the same person in the same house.  We have zero percent failures of this part all around the world, and he has 100%.  Not only 100%...but the same channel.  I look at facts.  

I  am very comfortable that there is no reason to change caps.  But because we always have done the maximum to assure our products are perfect, I will check every unit here and replace themjust so people know we are on top of things.  Caps are bought to order for any manufacturing run, and every cap is checked and measured before being used.   Could it be a bad batch?  No reason to think that. There are no other failures.   

I know the quality that goes into a PrimaLuna.  And so do customers.  In a time where companies are trying to stay even with previous years, we have had double-digit increases every year.  In fact over 30% in the fiscal year to date.  Much of that is due to customers who bought  PrimaLuna over a decade ago, they have not had problems, and they buy another.  

I know how the Dutch are about products being perfect.  Look inside and compare for yourself.  Or better yet, see what people in the industry buy for their own use.  



  

Hi Guys

For clarity, this is not a large coupling cap that failed in George's preamp.  It's a high-frequency snubber, which is why the suspicion about outside causes.  We've never had that failure ever, but to ensure there is no issue I am contacting every customer to see if it is a recurring theme. If there is an issue, it will be handled to perfection, and I've spent hours on the phone with customers who universally are ecstatic with their PrimaLuna's.  

The engineer that designed this preamp is no rookie, and was Chief Engineer at Goldmund in Switzerland.  He was responsible for designing some of their most iconic products.  And that's why it rocks people's worlds.  The amount of time and attention given to any problem...including this one... is equal to the engineering that has set PrimaLuna apart from other brands.  That's why you see features and protection circuits in PrimaLuna that you don't see elsewhere.  Hence our credo "Built to last a lifetime".  

I'd also like to say that this thread has in fact resulted .. at least in part...to two more of these preamps being sold today alone.  I'm convinced they will work perfectly...and if they don't I'm sure the buyers will report!