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211.10.18.77
In Reply to: Re: Feastrex Dimension 5/Anything else needed fixing in one year? posted by chopper87@aol.com on February 11, 2007 at 08:52:03:
You are quite right, chopper87. I think they may have made just about all of the mistakes that people with good ideas, sincerity and dedication but little experience in the business can make when starting out. If it wasn't for the deep pockets of their president, who makes money from several biotechnology patents, their mistakes would probably have caused them to disappear from the scene faster than you can say "whizzer cone." They initially spent an amount of money that makes one wince to hear it, but the guys who are left know how to squeeze a dollar until the eagle grins. My own line of business is totally unrelated to theirs, but I know how easy it is for a starry-eyed entreprenuer who comes into "easy money" (an easily obtained loan or "other people's money," in their case the money that the president had obtained from his other business) to use that money to dig himself into a serious hole. An austerity budget can be a good thing since it limits the amount of harm that an entreprenuer can do to himself. Anyway, the stuff that they are actually shipping now has a lot of magic in it, so I think their many foibles and travels down rabbit trails over the last two years were not in vain.
Follow Ups:
"You are quite right, chopper87. I think they may have made just about all of the mistakes that people with good ideas, sincerity and dedication but little experience in the business can make when starting out. If it wasn't for the deep pockets of their president, who makes money from several biotechnology patents, their mistakes would probably have caused them to disappear from the scene faster than you can say "whizzer cone." They initially spent an amount of money that makes one wince to hear it, but the guys who are left know how to squeeze a dollar until the eagle grins. My own line of business is totally unrelated to theirs, but I know how easy it is for a starry-eyed entreprenuer who comes into "easy money" (an easily obtained loan or "other people's money," in their case the money that the president had obtained from his other business) to use that money to dig himself into a serious hole. An austerity budget can be a good thing since it limits the amount of harm that an entreprenuer can do to himself. Anyway, the stuff that they are actually shipping now has a lot of magic in it, so I think their many foibles and travels down rabbit trails over the last two years were not in vain."I actually am rooting for them to perfect or at least develope a great sounding and RELIABLE/TRUSTWORTY product. How did they take care of those adventuresome customers who had paid for and experienced flawed products during their very short (if it only took one year to debug) learning period? This is key for potential future customers, like me.
Feastrex did not ship a single product outside the country until just recently. They did all their beta testing in Japan, where everything is close by and they have the advantage of being able to communicate in the same language with the users. Every time they made improvements, they went back and "upgraded" everyone to the new and improved version. They have sold a fair number of units in Japan, but I find it interesting that MANY of their local customers have gone back to buy other models. They'll start off with the D5, D5nf, or D6, and then they'll go back and buy a different model than the one they originally purchased, and then they go for the field coil models. Feastrex enjoys a really outstanding relationship with its local customers in Japan. And some of its best customers are its subcontractors, which works out really well because they become very enthusiastic about, and cooperative with, Feastrex's vision. Of course, what's possible for them inside Japan and outside Japan are very different, due to the physical distance and the language barriers. That's why they waited until recently to start shipping outside the country.
"Feastrex did not ship a single product outside the country until just recently. They did all their beta testing in Japan, where everything is close by and they have the advantage of being able to communicate in the same language with the users. Every time they made improvements, they went back and "upgraded" everyone to the new and improved version. They have sold a fair number of units in Japan, but I find it interesting that MANY of their local customers have gone back to buy other models. They'll start off with the D5, D5nf, or D6, and then they'll go back and buy a different model than the one they originally purchased, and then they go for the field coil models. Feastrex enjoys a really outstanding relationship with its local customers in Japan. And some of its best customers are its subcontractors, which works out really well because they become very enthusiastic about, and cooperative with, Feastrex's vision. Of course, what's possible for them inside Japan and outside Japan are very different, due to the physical distance and the language barriers. That's why they waited until recently to start shipping outside the country."That is really great news. I am a proven fan of the small yet talented and dedicated Japanese designer. I have yet to find the equal of my Yamamoto A08-S.
However, I have invested much time and money into purchasing and comparing many respected eight inch full range drivers in reflex, back, and front horn cabinets. Unlike with most electronics, it is often very tricky to predict how each driver will perform in rarious settings. A prime example; I have a rare pair of (although readily available from Lowther) Lowther PM2MKII Alnico drivers that are fitted with the same sized magnet ring as the PM4, but, use a softer and less potent pole piece and plate. This driver uses the same updated cone and has the same 2.2 flux density as my Lowther DX-4's. However, I preferred the sound of DX-4's in all previously tried cabinet types. The dX-4's just offered more presence and life, especially in the midrange and high frequencies. BUY, when I ventured to try various full range drivers in the very simple JE Labs Open Baffle, the PM2MKII's came to LIFE in a stunning fashion! I am talking the type of artificial acoustic reality that you don't forget when you hear it. No other (in my collection) full range driver has ever pulled this magic trick off in any of my cabinet/horn types Period. I then (I don't assume much any more) assummed that if I preferred other drivers, including the very similar DX-4's, in all other cabinets, then they (the dx4's) should really shine in the OB's. NOT! All other drivers sounded nice but very much as they did in other various cabinet experiments. None came even remotely close to the magic trick pulled off by the PM2MKII's in the JE Labs OB's. So why bring this up in a thread devoted to Feastrex. Well, because when I questioned Lowther about ,what the hell was happening here, they claimed that the very large PM4 type magnets' air gap is much larger than others and when excited offers this unique sonic bennefit. Like the PM2MKII/PM4, the Feastrex also have very large and roundish shaped magnets. I am still baffled as to why this potential benefit did not manafest itself until fitted in open baffles though. But, it is huge and real, and has caused me to put all my other drivers and cabinets in moth balls. I would love to try Feastrexs' in my OB's.
Chopper87,I do believe I envy you. I have never heard the Yamamoto A08-S, but damn! Miss Yamamoto has a mighty fine set of hood ornaments on her. That has to be one of the most erotic-looking amplifiers I have ever seen, and if it sounds anywhere near as nice as it looks, it must be wonderful. And the same goes for the PM2MKII. I've never heard it, but I have a friend who visits Japan from overseas a few times each year listen to the Exact and Feastrex drivers, and until he found Exact and Feastrex, the PM2MKII was the only fullrange that ever really turned him on. In fact, he has a love-hate relationship with Lowther, because he loves the PM2MKII, but he hates what (according to him -- I have no opinon on the subject myself) Lowther has become in recent years. Basically he turned to Exact and Feastrex to find a driver that could replace his ancient PM2MKII units that he keeps nursing along. He too uses his PM2MKII units in OB, by the way.
It has been over a year since he last came to Japan, and fully two years since he visited Feastrex with me. At that time Feastrex and Exact's Mr. Sano were still cooperating to produce what eventually became the Feastrex D6, and he went to hear the first prototype. At that point, my friend had already been discussions with Mr. Sano for quite some time about producing a driver very similar to that as a one-off pair for him. And it is interesting that although Mr. Sano was very much into dust caps instead of phase plugs, my friend was insistent on phase plugs in his one-offs, which is coincidentally the direction that Feastrex also ultimately went in. The sad part for my friend is that Mr. Sano got my friend's money and started to build the drivers but never completed them, and to this day they are unfinished. Mr. Sano can't finish them because he owes certain parts suppliers money and they won't do anything for him until he pays up. So my friend's units sit in Limbo . . . next time my friend comes to Japan we're going to visit Mr. Sano and try to pick up the available parts for my friend's unfinished drivers and then go beg on bended knee (I expect I will be literally doing that -- that's not just a figure of speech) for Feastrex's Mr. Teramoto to finish the drivers for my poor orphaned friend.
(The Japanese have an expression, "shiri-nugui," that is one of their great contributions to the world's linguistic culture. It means to clean up another person's mess, but the literal meaning is to wipe another person's ass for them. For some reason it is not considered an offensive expression even in polite company, although it always conveys the strong sense of being inconvenienced.)
I can't remember what my friend told me about why the PM2MKII units sound better than all the other Lowthers, including the PM4, but I can tell you that his explanation didn't sound anything at all like what you are telling me you heard from Lowther, and I bet he would say that the explanation Lowther gave you is a line of BS. (One of his peeves with Lowther is that there is no longer anyone there who really understands the Lowther drivers. According to my friend, there very few people who really understand Lowther, and none of them work for Lowther . . . )
Since he has not heard any of the new Feastrex units, I don't know how my friend would compare them to the PM2MKII, but I know he heard a huge world of difference between all the Exacts and the Lowther drivers, and likewise for the first Feastrex D6 prototype that he heard two years ago. He was not looking for a driver that would duplicate the sound of the PM2MKII, so it was not seen as a problem, but he was always very clear, there is nothing Lowther-like about these Japanese fullranges. I never heard anyone comment that the sound of the Feastrex drivers is evocative of Lowther. If you are a big fan of the PM2MKII, you might prefer the D5 or D6 to the D5nf. On any open baffle of manageable size, a helper woofer would be in order, especially for the D5/D6, as they are very highly damped by their monster magnets. But they are very fine sounding drivers indeed, and I bet you would love them. When I say, that, I'm extrapolating from the experiences of my friend, which seem to closely parallel yours. "Great minds run along the same track," and all that . . .
Hi! I am the friend that Christopher is referring to and yes, i do like the PM2MKII better than the rest of the Lowthers. My take on the reason why it is better than the ones with "hard" pole pieces is that the soft center pole is fully saturated in the PM2MKII. This fact gives two greate benefits, lower vc inductance and a magnet field that is not as easily affected by the current in the VC. I also think that one of the reasons you are getting better resunts in an OB is the shere mass of the magnet, all reactive force from vc movement is first seen by it so the relationship between cone mass and magnet mass is not unimportant. The magnet also have a very nice and smooth shape.BR,
Anders
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