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Shocking Lampizator Service

I bought a Lampizator Horizon several months ago and have been delighted with it. A few weeks ago there was a pop and the left channel lowered in output so my imaging was off center. I tried different diagnostic combos until I realized it had to be the Horizon DAC/PREAMP. I emailed Lukasz and he said yes they needed to look at the DAC, and that they would take care of everything. A few days later I was emailed  a prepaid label to ship it back to Poland. Rob, the US Distributor also weighed in via email to make sure everything was being handled.  I dropped the flight case off on may 30th (they offer home pick up as well). I got two email updates one explaining that the problem was mechanical as it must have been dropped by the shipper on the initial shipment to me. That's an impressive drop given the Horizon is shipped in a flight case with at least 6 inches of foam around it. The thing is that I got it back to  my house yesterday June 9th. That's 11 days round trip to Poland for a repair! My dCS Vivaldi Upsampler had a known issue that I addressed 2 years ago. It took over three weeks round trip to their Boston repair facility. I am not bagging on dCS as their turn around time is normal. It's the Lampizator service that I find SHOCKINGLY great. Frankly, I was concerned when I made the investment in the Horizon about service should I need it being based in Poland. Lukasz has built a business model that is truly global. I can highly recommend the Horizon as an outstanding DAC and pre-amp (the volume control reminds me of the ARC REF 10 if you know that unit, it is great!), and the service is second to none I have encountered this far in my audio journey. 

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pennfootball71's avatar
pennfootball71
250 posts
 

@ghdprentice Dude you are clueless and uninformed so I will inform you. These are hand made one at a time! They are making only 500 worldwide over the next 4-5 years. Do you think they just pump Lampizator’s down the assembly line? It takes a month to make like 4 or 5 of them at a time! So now you are informed please use this as a learning opportunity! They fixed it!

oddiofyl's avatar
oddiofyl
3,471 posts
 

Actually gdhprentice is one of the most knowledgeable people on this forum.  I'm pretty sure he knows they are hand made .  

Why did one Lampi owner have a solution over night and another waits 1 1/2 months?   Either the distributor dropped the ball or they are waiting for parts. 

As for white glove treatment?   I never expect it, but when I do it restores my faith in the mfg and strengthens brand loyalty.  

There are still global parts shortage in every sector so it's not a great time for repairs ....

kairosman's avatar
kairosman
260 posts
 

Baltic 4 owner here in Canada, I had a warranty issue as well, which was resolved eventually but it was not straightforward. I suspect Horizon and Baltic owners DO get different treatment, but then again there is only one distributor in NA and Lukasz has maybe 10-15 employees so small scale "cottage industry" size without huge cash flow or cheap credit, and thus he is beholden to the ’white glove’ folks for purchasing his higher margin DACs. Frankly it’s amazing what he’s done with such limited resources - the Baltic is hands down the best DAC sonically speaking I have owned so far. I own a small business with 25 employees and I am under pressure every day deciding where and when to allocate resources.

scott22
241 posts
 

Many years ago I bought used  adcom gear and on day one by my negligence blew out the left channel of the gfp 555 amp. I called them up as I lived near their operation in East Brunswick NJ. They told me bring in the amp with a dozen doughnuts. While I waited they fixed the amp and while at it made some other improvements/updates.

nquery
103 posts
 

While their DACs sound fantastic, if you scan various forums I think you will notice that there is a very high rate of issues and warranty service with Lampizator. I have had three Lampi DAC’s pass through my hands and they all had issues requiring service - one prior to purchase, one while owning, and one after resell. And note the three additional examples above in this short thread alone. Build quality/QA is not there yet imho. Same goes for NA distributor - very responsive at times but they obviously mis-packed one of my DAC’s such that it got beat up during shipping. That said, the DACs sound great in the right setup (output noise can be high so proper preamp matching is critical). I am sure the Horizon sounds amazing.

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