Dear clearthink,
While you think it's "so funny", I take it as being pretty close to a personal attack on my integrity. Perhaps our forum members should ignore everything I wrote. From my perspective, you are misinformed. More on this in a moment.
Let's look at the facts:
1) Bob started Phase Linear right out of college. It brought high-powered amplifiers to the masses and positively murdered the competing Bose and Macintosh Super-amps, not only in terms of power, but also sonically. The Phase amps had a very high failure rate comparable to the Arcam receivers of today. Still, 75% of the people who buy Arcam receivers or who bought Phase Linear power amplifiers, managed to get years of fine performance without a problem. With the initial units failing, Bob improved the design on a consistent basis, resulting in a very low failure rate ultimately. By that point, the company's books showed a very strong trend and Bob, in his very early 20s, was offered $1 million for the company. He took it. So would you if given the opportunity at that age. Should Bob be held responsible for the new Phase Linear management's decisions? Is Roy Allison to blame for what happened to AR, Allison, or RDL (all gone)? Is Henry Kloss responsible for what happened ultimately to AR, KLH, Advent, and Kloss (all gone; AR and KLH exist in name only)? Were it not for these fine pioneers and others with a similar background, you wouldn't be a reading this post right now. Due to the enormous expansion of the electronics industry, changing musical chairs seems to be quite common.
2) Bob took the money and started Carver. Once again, he brought high-performance concepts to a young budget-minded industry and the products were so highly regarded that even today, dozens of people converge on the Smoky Mountains every year for Carver Fest. Bob didn't even know about it! Imagine every cottage in the area being filled with Phase Linear, Carver, and Sunfire products – – each system freighted in for two weeks of listening and discussions--by consumers! I can think of no other consumer product that has this type of loyalty--not Porsche, Harley Davidson nor Ducati, all of whom have "fests". Remember, were talking two weeks of every year! When Bob found out, he was moved to tears. I'm not exaggerating; he's an emotional person and very affectionate.
So Bob brought speaker kits so everyone could assemble a pair of Cinema Ribbon speakers. The following year everybody got to build a 20 W per channel Carver-designed tube -type amplifier. But, I digress. The Carver brand was so successful, that the company began to deviate from Bob's original vision. There was a Board of Directors who voted down many of Bob's ideas, inventions, and suggestions. Eventually, amid acrimonious board meetings, Bob was fired! He did not leave willingly. Shall we excoriate Bob for the actions of the remaining management?
How about this: years later, when Sunfire was enjoying great success, Bob told me he was going to buy the Carver name back, reintroduce the brand and cover all warranties. I could not understand why he would do this since he was only buying the brand name; he had no warranty obligations to any Carver consumer legally. He turned to me and said, "Frank, with my name on the product, I will not abandon these consumers". Bob paid for the repairs out of his own pocket.Compare this to some of the ARC posts above.
3) The Sunfire story was a bit different and yet similar. In a repeat of what happened with Phase Linear, he was offered a substantial amount of money for the company but by then the company had been in business for many years and Bob was thinking about retirement. So, yes, he did sell the company to Core Brands who changed the direction of the company downmarket. Bob chose not to remain on board although he was invited to. The upshot of this last venture is similar to the Carver situation in that the Sunfire products are still out there doing things no other product has ever done, all these years later, and we even provide continuing service through an outside contractor wherein we make no money but arrange for a repair with no estimate charge, a full warranty for one year, and upgraded components ensuring future reliability. Regular technicians cannot repair many of the Bob Carver-designed products because no one has been able to backward engineer them despite the patents expiring. We are able to turn to Bob for the most difficult and arcane repair issues despite this endeavor having no commercial connection to our current company.
4) So you feel our warranty is suspect... If failures are not an issue, and this forum is open to anyone's eyes in case my claims are fraudulent, why would we go bankrupt? Bob wants a lifetime warranty on our new products. I fought against it due to the fact that cynics like clearthink laughed in my face asking how old we are. So, I made it 10 years and I put it in writing. It's still our intention to charge nothing for service or tubes as long as the company remains solvent. Would we sell the company? Well, yes, but remember that Jordon has right of first refusal and frankly, owning the Bob Carver Company represents his future. He's half our age.
The current series of power amplifiers albeit with higher power now, have been in production for five years with the stellar reliability record I referred to above. Our amazing Line Source Loudspeaker, which easily took Best Sound at the recent New York hi-fi show, and garnered a review from Absolute Sound implying it's one of the greatest speakers of all time, has had zero failures since there are 40 drivers per tower absorbing energy. Were not even sure what the power handling capacity is other than the fact that it's in excess of 1000 W RMS and yet the review was done with a 20 W per channel tube -type amplifier which we'll be reintroducing with more power in about 60 days. So, to the uninformed, it would appear risky to offer a 10 year warranty including tubes but not when you have no failures. Make sense?
So, dear forum members, based on these two posts--one negative (and slanted) and one rebuttal, feel free to make your own choice. From my perspective, clearthink is the equivalent of fake news. He emphasizes a single negative aspect while ignoring the positives. Yes, this is like politics; people like clearthink will never change their opinion and, in fact resort to personal attacks, twisting the truth to validate their opinions.
I'm a 50 year veteran of the industry. My reputation is my stock in trade. My social circle includes a huge percentage of people from this industry. I'm the founder of Onkyo, and Integra in the United States. I participated in the launch of Sonus Faber, Focal through JM Lab, named the Pro-Ject turntable, helped launch the REL line of subwoofers, and too many more to mention. I've represented most of the brands you are likely to see on this forum from Apogee to whatever starts with Z. I have always been available to help people in our hobby. It's my hobby too. You may note that I published my phone number. I get calls seven days a week on equipment selection, system setup, acoustics and so forth. Most of this has nothing to do with my business. I just like it. I love the industry, I love the products that emphasize individuality, and I love music like the rest of you. If I've derailed the thread, or if I've come across as nothing more than a salesman with no integrity, I most sincerely apologize.
Finally, and this is the funny part, clearthink warns us using his command of Latin to beware of my product. This warning was issued after countless negative ARC posts in this very thread! Clearthink's position is that Audio Research is to be trusted while we are not. I do indeed find THIS rather funny. In fact, our current superb dealer network and endorsements from industry luminaries and other manufacturers makes clearthink's position look rather foolish. That said, I'm glad that he posted because there are people out there who are prejudiced against Bob Carver and I always feel the need to clear the air of false assumptions. I also appreciate the fact that he did allow that Bob is a talented designer. If he were not a caring and professional partner, I would not be involved.
