Classe move to China

I am a proud Canadian and was always proud of some of our great Companies-
SIMAUDIO,BRYSTON,CLASSE,BLUE CIRCLE,etc.....Matter of fact,I bought 2 Classe CA-400 and a CA 300 but sold them due to their B&W ties and China preproduction.I think Classe has lost alot of grounds here as their products are no cheaper than others.I personally am done with them...
But what makes it worse for them is that it is audiophiles complaining here and they are the purchasers and they will be getting fewer and fewer over the next 10 years.
Enjoy your music.

Paul McGowan of PS Audio fame tried the Chinise Connection for a number of years. Now he has brought all of his production back to the states and his products are now "all American" except I would guess some of the resistors, capacitors, etc. may come from other places in the world. It would be difficult to build a product wholly made in the USA. I think he is to be commended regardless if you purchase PS Audio equipment or not.

Here is scary news I learned the other day on NPR, the USA no longer produces any antibiotic meds. All antibiotics are made overseas because of cheap labor and there are few if any inspections allowed by the FDA in these labs.
So if another World War ever starts (as some have predicted and let all the heavens of all faiths forbid) do we expect the very countries we may be opposing to send us medicines for our wounded and semiconductors and steel for our jets, tanks, etc.? How short sighted we and our elected politicians have become!
If we could go back in time 60 years, I'm sure Hitler and his Axis would have sold the Allies these items during the war if we couldn't make them ourselves. 😊
Globalization and the quest for profits be damned, one has to look out for one's best interest and our elected and greedy Senators and Representatives both in the Republicrook party and the Democrook party should be kicked out on their fannies and tarred and feathered for their stupidity and seeming inability to plan for the future, if not their greed and corruption. (Oh, I'm certainly not implying that all of our politicians are greedy and stupid!)(Maybe a better term than stupid is historically and economically uneducated!)
One thing about the Chinese I greatly admire, they plan not for the now, but tens of years into into the future. Our politicians seem only concerned with their next election.

China already has put new tariffs on ours. They believe in all of the trade money going to their pockets. [www.nytimes]
There is a plus side. The gear might be resistant to radiation from the lead content.
Hifihvn (Answers | This Thread)

And who's fault is that? Not much leverage in the negoitations when your competitor is financing billions of the budget and COUNTING. If I was China, why not get all you can. You got to be a moron not going for the jugular.

Remember a company's responsibility is to the share holders and NOT to a local communities economically development so it will do what's best for the company's interest. It's up to the government to create a business friendly environment where a company wants to stay, invest and create jobs. This environment can be in US, India ... anywhere in the world. It worked when Toyota, Honda, BMW ... opened plants in the US.

With our current administration anti-business policies, companies are hording record amount of cash and don't want to invest and create jobs. The best policies are where both sides wins. Companies get incentive to invest in a community. The community gets an increased tax base from the company, new job creation and potential spawning more new business.

The uninformed always bashing businesses ... How about the feds intervening with Boeing opening another plan in So. Carolina and because So. Carolina is not a right to work state, unions (Obama supporters) are fighting against the new plant.

Now if you're a company that is friendly to the administration and CEO works on the job creation initiative, you pay zero taxes on 5 billion of revenue and able to open an airplane engines plant in China without scrutiny.

I cannot find a company in China to make my buggy whip. Perhaps a USA company could do so, but they also turned me down. Seems the EPA and the FDA has a rule against such devices. PETA is suing me. What's a guy who wants to create a few jobs. Everybody needs to read or re-read Smith's 'Wealth of Nations'. He is the one who got us into all this.

Back to Classe and audio for a while...

As I understand it, Classe will be built in the same factory that B&W has been built in for many years. B&W controls the production and the quality. Classe will do the same. They are not simply throwing the production over their shoulder to some contract manufacturer in China and hoping for the best.

It is my understanding that the first products they got from the new plant they completely disassembled, piece by piece, to check on the quality of the parts and the build and they were completely satisfied.

For those complaining about the sound of some of the new products, doesn't that have more to do with the Canadian design team than where new products are made? The design team should spec the design, the parts, the board layout, the tolerances etc.

I hate to see manufacturing go to China, but people should understand that there is a model of production in China that can preserve the quality. It is just up to the parent company to insure it happens.