Roger Alan Modjeski (RAM) 1951 - 2019


It is with great sadness that I announce Roger A. Modjeski passed away peacefully in his home in San Pablo, CA after an 12 month battle with cancer. Roger started Music Reference in 1981 and later RAM Tubes, The Tube Audio Store, and The Berkeley HiFi School. For more than 38 years he tirelessly ran his business and designed some of the most unique and well received audio components in the industry. Right until the near end Roger was working, designing, and teaching until he physically was unable to continue.

The link below will take you my playground where I have posted my tribute to Roger (click ENTER after the page loads):

http://www.electrafidelity.com/

Fare thee well my friend.
clio09
The Quad 57s run 6kV on the two bass panels and specified for 1.5kV on the treble panel. I remember Roger musing that he wanted, I thought at the time somewhat ambitiously, to run 1.8kV on his Quads. I always thought that would be pushing them a bit too far as the classic design is already quite prone to arcing over at higher volume. It was to do with lowering the distortion IIRC.
I’m not that familiar with the Acoustats but have heard them. How did he improve dispersion? Are there multiple tweeter panels on an Acoustat so you can use different phase to each, like on the Quad 63?
It would be brilliant to get Majestics going with direct drive, if you can make it, do! I’m sure Roger would have loved that. (Be very careful with instantly lethal voltage on the tube voltage power supply!!!) You’ll need to have a good working knowledge of their characteristics first, and liasing with Soundlabs would be the way to go I suspect.
Hope it would be Mono-Block, and reliable like his designs. While working @ Acoustic Sounds I raved about Music Reference to hundreds of customers over 6 years. BEST gear for the money not expensive. No one would believe what I paid for the pair of RM-9's. Roger was very generous, definitely never driven by the almighty dollar. Very few things you get to smile at for 24 years straight and counting........... got'm for a song and they're still singing....................RIP RAM.
 Never told anyone what I paid for the Mono-Blocks except Chad, just meant no one would believe IF I told them.
I don't think there will ever be a direct-drive for my Soundlabs without Roger. Not enough money in that venture, so only Roger would have built and tested it properly and for the right price.  
Impossible to compare Music Reference products with others, there is nothing comparable for sound, value and reliability. 
I do hope that the current MR products stay in production, for all those audiophiles who can't afford the reliable Atma-Sphere or Pass Labs offerings.
Wow, my good friend also named Roger who passed away five years ago had one of the RM9 MKII amps (he loved that amp), and that sound pulled me back into audio and got me excited about amplifiers and music all over again. Condolences to the family of one of the greats in the industry who's had a truly positive impact on people and audiophiles too.  
We have an RM9 Mk2 in the family as well and it’s mostly been reliable but it has suffered the odd quirk over 22 years, and not just tubes. The time the fuse blew at a home audio club event was not only frustrating, it showed the amp to have some physical design flaws, notably the location of the HT fuse underneath, inside the amp. It should be on the top panel somewhere in a safety fuse holder. The input stage and circuit board construction needs updating as well. Roger did know about these things but decided not to keep the RM9 in production, instead opting to make the excellent RM200.It would be good if the RM9 was put back into production, being a powerful all-tube circuit of classic Roger design. He wanted his amps to be as reliable as possible. To that end I’d probably refine and simplify the input stage to have no user adjustments, add automatic output stage biasing (not the same as cathode bias!) to bring it into the 21st century and bring the circuit board construction up to date, to keep his essential design but make it even more reliable. It could be the Mk3 version.