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Critic's Corner Discuss a review. Provide constructive feedback. Talk to the industry. |
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In Reply to: Then Curl's anger is misplaced... posted by mkuller on January 8, 2011 at 10:35:44:
and dug out some issues from the 80s to revisit this bruhaha. To establish perspective, let's first travel to 1983 in issue 30 where he reviewed the JC-80 preamp. Summation?
"The JC-80 is, in fact, so musical that I am ranking it along with tubed units."
High praise indeed for that time period. It was six years later that he encountered the Vendetta SCP-2a beginning with a discussion of the origin of the company name. He began with praise "If we lay aside the question of pure musicality for a while, there is much to admire." It was two pages later where he reinforced that original sentiment with "For all of its considerable sonic delectabilities, I find the Curl more involving as 'hi-fi'." There were many who suggested back in the day that he was on the take with Audio Research given all the glowing reviews. Then came the SP-4/D100 when the crap hit the fan. Bill Johnson said the negative reviews almost put the company out of business. So what did William Z do? Redouble his efforts and release the wonderful and highly successful SP-6 series. Even then, HP preferred the earlier versions to the "C". Eventually came the SP-10 which was again highly regarded.
Now to the claim that he suppressed positive commentary. For those who don't remember the original review styles, this was a "Special Report" as part 3 in a series about preamplifiers with five others given commentary. It was only with full reviews where the sample was sent to other reviewers for additional commentary. There were simply too many components covered in the the three part series to get counterpoints. A few issues later, Dave Wilson - yes, that Dave Wilson conducted a review of several pre-preamps and had nothing but high praise for the Vendetta unit either individually or in conjunction with the JC-80. Sounds like sour grapes to me from the "Vendetta Man".
During my browsing, I remembered one of the many reasons why I enjoyed the magazine under HP's reign - the beautiful and thought-provoking cover illustrations by Robbii. As an ice skater, I particularly like this one from a winter more than twenty years ago:
rw
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Follow Ups
- I went back to the library - E-Stat 08:53:50 01/09/11 (0)
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