Patrick Turner wrote:

Andre Jute wrote:

Patrick Turner wrote:

Its safe to assume nothing of superlative quality comes out of asia.

This is not quite true. I know one Japanese amp manufacturer who gets
excellent transformers out of China. He goes with a design and a
prototype for precisely what he wants, he supervises the work, he
refuses to pay for the entire batch if the tiniest little thing is
wrong. The result is a superb transformer. It isn't however cheap. This
guy has merely shifted the costs from expensive Japanese labour into
expensive design and very expensive supervision (count his time and
airfares). It suits this manic obsessive because a Japanese winder will
never stand still for a customer refusing to pay for an entire batch
because he finds a rough spot on a casing, which is an actual example I
heard from his wife. (I also heard that in the beginning the Chinese
winders were so inexpert, they couldn't match supposedly identical
transformers to within half a Henry even in the same batch. My local
generator rewinders do better than that!) He makes a limp effort to
talk up the savings but I estimate, taking his time into account, that
the actual saving is maybe 10 per cent, which accounts for him being
able to sell super quality amps at 15 or even sometimes 20 per cent
below his nearest competitors, quality for quality; depending on
whether he gives the saving to the customer or takes half of it for
profit. (See below about multipliers.) But, since he doesn't sell on
price anyway, being at the top end of the market, his Chinese option
isn't price-driven but an aspect of control of all his component inputs
for which he is willing to pay in time and effort.

You are right about all this.

First time I've actually seen Jute post anything of consequence. *And* ON_TOPIC
.. And actually sensible ! Goodness !!!!!

Good to see you're not *all* hot air Andre. ( I hope this wasn't the work of
that ghost writer of course )

Graham