Hi all,
Yes, John/Exemplar is alive and well ...
John and I will be exhibiting together in Suite 7130 at the Rocky Mountain Audiofest on September 29th - October 2nd.
Look for a new 300b amp from John at the show, along with the Denon 5910 and a flagship DAC.
I'll be hauling my Cherry cabinet Exemplar horns (groan), and of course there will be great vinyl there from my Galibier turntables and Schroeder tonearms.
John is certainly difficult to reach. Both Ric Berda (his Chicago dealer) and I try to pick up the communications slack for him, but we face a bit of a perception problem.
Many people don't even know that John has a dealer network (scroll to the bottom of the Exemplar home page to find the link), and John's voice-mail gives you no clue
Yes, his Exemplar website is hopelessly out of date. I've been hounding John for new pictures so that I can update my Exemplar section on the Galibier Design website.
John is working hard toward making things better. He has hired a full time assembler with whom he is very excited (not that way ... get your minds out of the gutter).
This fellow has experience working with extremely small electronics (surface mount devices and such), so doing things like the Denon mods is a walk in the park for him.
You can expect this single move to help John begin to catch up on demand in the coming months.
Your best track to John however is through dealers like Ric and myself. I know ... it's fun to talk with the designer, but if all you get is voice-mail, you're fooling yourself. That's why John hand-selected us as dealers.
Additionally, we tend to get hold of special "one-offs" and demos that you wouldn't otherwise know about.
Cheers,
Thom @ Galibier Design