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Amazing Service from Galibier Turntables

Just wanted to tell everyone about a fantastic experience I had with Galibier Design, which is most known for its turntables and Galibier's owner, Thom  Mackris.  I was in the market for a new turntable (currently have a Dr. Feickert woodpecker) and was considering purchasing a turntable from Galibier.  After spending two days with Thom Mackris comparing turntables, tonearms and cartridges, I decided to first purchase a new tonearm and then eventually purchase a new turntable.  It was Thom who suggested that I purchase a tonearm before considering purchasing a more expensive turntable.  Thom is one of the few manufacturers/dealers that I have met that is more concerned with helping you improve your system than he is with making a sale.  He is also one of the few people I have met that will spend as much time as you want to help you make the right decision. 

I purchased a Kuzma 4point tone-arm from Thom/Galibier.  Fortunately, I live in Colorado about 45 minutes from Thom.  He came down for two whole days, at my convenience, to help me set up the tonearm and dial it in.  It would not have taken nearly as long, but I had a lot of questions and was interested in learning as much as I could and Thom was happy to spend the time teaching me and showing me everything about the tonearm I had purchased.  the first day was spent getting the tonearm onto the table, connecting the cartridage, using a microscope to set the SAR, adjusting the azimuth, the tracking force and the VTA.  We got the table up and playing that first day and it sounded good.  The second day we spent an entire day just making adjustments and testing different things, until the VTA, SAR, azimuth, and tracking force were all perfect and my system was sounding better than it ever had.  Thom was an amazing teacher and showed me so many things. 

Thom has been down to my house two more times ( a total of 4 times) to help me out with some other stuff, such as trying out his phono stage at my house so I could see if I preferred his tube phono stage to my Boulder Amp 1008 solid state phono stage -- this was clearly  not something he needed to do as part of the sale of a tonearm.   

I greatly appreciate the time Thom has spent and all that he has taught me and how great my system is. 

One last thing: I have tested some of Thom's cables and compared them to my Nordost Frey 2 cables, and will give a detailed post in another forum on that, but his less expensive cables beat my Nordost Frey 2 cables. 
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gasherbaum OP
43 posts
 
As an update,I purchased some cables from Galibier including a tonearm cable.  A few months after I purchased my tonearm cable, Thom made a slight modification to the sleeve on the outside of the cable that he discovered made a significant improvement to the sound and clarity of the cable.  Thom called me up and told me about the change to the cable and suggested that he come to my house (about a 45 minute to 1 hour drive from Thom's place) and compare the new cable to the old cable in my system to see if the new cable made as big of a difference in my system.  It did -- it was a huge difference. 

Thom gave me the new cable and took back the old cable without charging me for the new cable as he said he could use the parts from the old cable. 

Great customer service once again -- driving to  my house to improve my cable for no charge, can't ask for better service. 

I bought a Galibier turntable from Thom and it should be here next week, I can't wait.  The turntable purchase was again some great service -- when Thom realized I was interested in his table (which weighs in excess of 100 pounds) but that I wanted to hear it and compare it to my table to make sure the improvement was significant enough, Thom drove the turntable down to my house and we spent the day listening to my table then putting my tone arm on his table and listening and then putting my tonearm back on my table. 
lewm
13,027 posts
 
Thom is one of the best guys in this business, in all ways.
salectric
751 posts
 
Thom is indeed one of the good guys in this business.  He is genuinely concerned about giving his customers the best advice even when this means a product he doesn’t sell.

 I bought my Galibier Gavia back in 2004 and it quickly became a permanent fixture in my system.  Of course Thom continues to refine his tables so the sound quality just gets better and better.  
thom_at_galibier_design's avatar
thom_at_galibier_design
729 posts
 
Thanks for the kind words, guys. With the small size of our company, we get to know each and every one of our customers quite well.

An extra (mutual) benefit accrues with our local customers - as we get to beta test new products and updates in the context their systems, and of course, they get to audition them ... not to mention that my customers are great people with whom I enjoy sharing music.

Of course, we don’t neglect our out of town customers who receive an in-house visit to both set up their rig as well as do a bit of mentoring. Truth be told, our customers are smart folks, and I usually come away from the experience learning something from them, as well as getting exposed to new music.

For those of you who are interested, here’s a brief recount of Friday’s visit: https://galibierdesign.com/cotton-vs-poly/

Cheers,
Thom @ Galibier Design
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