Marco your answer RE: Croft and Eminent Audio

[WikiBoy]

Hi Marco,

I have artwork and photo's of a whole batch of real fancy stuff that never hit the site because I was not working with Amar towards the end. The designs were complex (yes all Glenn) case work cost a fortune and this was reflected in asking prices from between 6 to 14 K for various pre and power amps.

Even more bizarrely Glenn and I were looking at Croft price lists on a German dealer site the other evening where we found items priced at between 35 and 50 K per unit in the Croft range. The funny thing is that not only had these amps never been built but Amar had neglected to mention to Glenn that he had ever offered these prestige items to the Germans.

I have no doubt that Glenn could build a completely overkill amp for 50k and it would be a world beater but this is not what Croft was about. Remember back to the Micro era whereby a little giant killer pre-amp retailed for £125 in the mid eighties, and this was when hifi snakeoil bullshit was at it's thickest.

Frankly I think that Glenn hated all of the recent high end EA/Croft kit with the possible exception of the Om-Seti (on the EA site retail 12K) but even this unit caused untold grief to build and setup.

Glenn will be returning back to the old "Croft Micro giant killer" ethos for the new range. Nothing will retail for more than a grand. Plain black boxes and silver knobs will be all you get, but you can be guaranteed a killer sound which will trounce all at up to multiples of the £750-£1000 price points. There will be a pre, power and phono stage (MM only) and that is all I can say at this point.

There you have it, I have said more here than is currently published on the site. Be patient cos it will take a while to produce the new items. I think it will be worth it!

Regards Matt.

Tell him to sell it on ebay - forget the dealers, they screwed him the last time.

[matodono1]

Tell him to sell it on ebay - forget the dealers, they screwed him the last time.

Thanks Richard,

I don't think that will be necessary. There are a small number of highly trusted dealers/friends who will ensure that demand always outstrips supply.

Ebay has been a lifeline for many in the industry but does have the effect of devaluing a brand. Not really what we want.

Regards, Matt.

[WikiBoy]

Thanks Richard,

I don't think that will be necessary. There are a small number of highly trusted dealers/friends who will ensure that demand always outstrips supply.

Ebay has been a lifeline for many in the industry but does have the effect of devaluing a brand. Not really what we want.

Regards, Matt.

Logic is not a lifeline.

Ebay is no lifeline for anyone, it is full of new start up businesses and it is a joy to see them. There is more new poduct and ideas around since, well hard to think, but probably 30 years.

Protect the brand name, that is a farce. Loyalty is as loyalty does, the rest is bullshit, just another form of, in this case snobbish, marketing.

Loyalty means giving customers the best deal in quality and price and no retailer has ever done that.

Its a new world, direct selling if not ebay then via a website I am sure you can create for him, does not diminish any brand.

[matodono1]

Logic is not a lifeline.

Ebay is no lifeline for anyone, it is full of new start up businesses and it is a joy to see them. There is more new poduct and ideas around since, well hard to think, but probably 30 years.

Protect the brand name, that is a farce. Loyalty is as loyalty does, the rest is bullshit, just another form of, in this case snobbish, marketing.

Loyalty means giving customers the best deal in quality and price and no retailer has ever done that.

Its a new world, direct selling if not ebay then via a website I am sure you can create for him, does not diminish any brand.

Hi Richard,

You say it as you see it and I like that, don't get me wrong I am not against ebay. I myself have sold hundreds of hifi related items on ebay to all corners of the globe (username "matodono1").

Not only that but I have helped a number of my web clients market on ebay including a stonemason client of mine trying to sell gravestones (which almost succeeded if you can believe that).

Arthur K of the funk firm has sold loads of Achromats and Achroplats on ebay with listings that I designed, but that is as far as he can go. If he starts selling TT's direct he risks losing all of his dealers.

Unfortunately most people who spend more than £500 on a hifi product want to try before they buy and for that you need dealers. Selling new and unknown products on the internet (even if they are backed by positive reviews) is a big ask.

So the dealers are needed and ebay and dealers don't mix.

If your experience is different then I am all ears as I don't wish to miss any marketing tricks.

Thanks again,

Matt.

[Marco]

Hi Matt,

I have artwork and photo's of a whole batch of real fancy stuff that never hit the site because I was not working with Amar towards the end. The designs were complex (yes all Glenn) case work cost a fortune and this was reflected in asking prices from between 6 to 14 K for various pre and power amps.

I would love to have heard that stuff - I bet it sounded amazing!!

Even more bizarrely Glenn and I were looking at Croft price lists on a German dealer site the other evening where we found items priced at between 35 and 50 K per unit in the Croft range. The funny thing is that not only had these amps never been built but Amar had neglected to mention to Glenn that he had ever offered these prestige items to the Germans.

What was that guy like?

I'm normally a good judge of character, and I was right about him. He always struck me as a 'wide boy'. I'm just glad that I never bought anything from him!

I have no doubt that Glenn could build a completely overkill amp for 50k and it would be a world beater but this is not what Croft was about. Remember back to the Micro era whereby a little giant killer pre-amp retailed for £125 in the mid eighties, and this was when hifi snakeoil bullshit was at it's thickest.

Yeah, I admire Glenn's principles of making superb sounding affordable amps, but part of me also feels it's a shame that a man with so much design talent doesn't want to 'spread his wings' and show the world what he can really do. I'm quite sure that if Glenn built an 'overkill' amp, such as you describe, it would be amongst the best available in the world - if not *the* best. However, I also appreciate his reasoning for not doing so. At the end of the day it's his life and his decision what he wants to do with it. I respect him for sticking to his guns.

Glenn will be returning back to the old "Croft Micro giant killer" ethos for the new range. Nothing will retail for more than a grand. Plain black boxes and silver knobs will be all you get, but you can be guaranteed a killer sound which will trounce all at up to multiples of the £750-£1000 price points. There will be a pre, power and phono stage (MM only) and that is all I can say at this point.

That sounds very interesting. I'm sure there will be a decent sized market for that stuff, and that it will offer serious sound-per-pound value, as is usual with Croft equipment. A £1000 Croft amplifier, in my experience, will compete on a performance level with most other manufacturer's equipment up to £3000, or perhaps even more, and it will absolutely trounce anything at its own price level. I wish Glenn all the success in the world, and like I said, if we can help promote his products in any way just let me know

Marco.

[Marco]

If anyone is looking for the most recent off-topic parts of this discussion, they have been moved to Richard's "Rip off British Hi-fi industry" thread

The discussion here is about Croft and Eminent Audio only.

Marco.

[Achilles]

It is wonderful that Glenn Croft is going to continue to enrich the hifi world
with his creative genius. I am so pleased with my Charisma and Dakshini.
As a classical musical fan, I find the sound he creates is unbeatable.
Good luck to Glenn. Yes, I agree sound is most important. 'Never judge a book by its cover'!

[DSJR]

Now Marco, regarding remarks on the best Sony CD player EVER thread... and regarding comments you've made above, I wish to gently remind you (being an SL1210 owner and all) that the best things most often come in smaller leaner packages...

You want Glenn to show us what he can REALLY do? Well, he will, with this new range!

Any half decent electronics engineer can make a superb product with enough money to throw at it (and I doubt Sony were short of a penny or two when your CD player was designed and produced). What Glenn's doing (and did on the early stuff) was to make a giant killer using the best components he could find whilst keeping it simple. Careful choice of component tolerances (easy now 1% or better resistors are ten a penny) and using valves well up to the job can make a superb product for not much dosh. OK the outside won't be of Sony "ES" quality and we're going to have TWO volume controls again (GGGRRR!!! ), but I bet it'll make your over engineered CD player sound better than ever (and mine too possibly.....). The phono stage should be good too and a great UK made upgrade for Cambridge 640 owners (apologies to NVA, I don't know your products).

Regarding selling to dealers or eBay, Glenn's products have ALWAYS fetched great prices on eBay and I suspect it's us that know, posting on sites like this one, that have kept these prices up, as the great unwashed out there won't know what a Croft product is and may not even care - I can't even state Ken Kessler's helped here as few people buy HiFi Snooze these days.. Dealers on the whole are desperate yet ignorant, pompous a*seh*l*s by and large and either want indefinite loan stock to try to sell from, or will try to shaft the small guy as they themselves are shafted by the big ones.... - if it takes one to know one then I ashamedly hold up my hand, although I hope I improved with age and maturity/knowledge...

If Glenn has a small number of friends who happen to be dealers (and I know one very well indeed) then hopefully they'll do a great job in spreading the word and keeping his product "clean." If he made up some high current mains filters as he used to, or decent, not too expensive interconnects or something, he could possibly sell these on ebay, but I doubt he'd have the inclination to do so, or the time to be honest.....

[Marco]

Hi Dave,

This is quite funny because I'm actually taking my Croft preamp down to Glenn on Monday to be modified!

Incidentally, I agree with everything you've said about Croft (and Glenn).

I'm in the middle of a listening session right now but I will comment in more detail later, and let you know what modifications I'm having done to the Croft. Save to say though they are significant, and will no doubt improve an already superb preamp...

Marco.

P.S Achilles, welcome to the forum - we'll chat later

[Marco]

Hi Dave,

Now Marco, regarding remarks on the best Sony CD player EVER thread... and regarding comments you've made above, I wish to gently remind you (being an SL1210 owner and all) that the best things most often come in smaller leaner packages...

You want Glenn to show us what he can REALLY do? Well, he will, with this new range!

I know all about the "smaller leaner package" thing, and adopt this principle as much as possible in my system. I can assure you that each component I own has been carefully chosen to do a specific job to the highest standard whilst achieving excellent sound-per-pound value. This is very important to me, as the days of me chucking tens of thousands of pounds at hi-fi (such as I did in my Naim days) are long gone. I like to use my considerable experience now to source equipment which performs well in excess of its price tag and adopt lateral thinking, which is precisely what the modified SL-1210 and Yaqin valve amp are all about.

Yes I've heard all about Glenn's new range of products from the man himself, and I'm sure they will be quite something. Glenn's going back to basics after being controlled by Amar's deluded vision of what type of Croft products should be represented in the marketplace, and I'm sure his new range of amps will be veritable 'giant-killers' in the true Croft tradition, as we would expect from Glenn.

His new amps will be priced affordably and will offer serious sound-per-pound value. I will be in regular contact with Glenn over the coming months so I hope to be amongst the first people to hear the prototypes. The Art of Sound will also be working closely with Glenn (and Matt O'Donoghue) to promote Croft Acoustics. Look out for an exclusive review of some products soon!

Any half decent electronics engineer can make a superb product with enough money to throw at it (and I doubt Sony were short of a penny or two when your CD player was designed and produced). What Glenn's doing (and did on the early stuff) was to make a giant killer using the best components he could find whilst keeping it simple. Careful choice of component tolerances (easy now 1% or better resistors are ten a penny) and using valves well up to the job can make a superb product for not much dosh. OK the outside won't be of Sony "ES" quality and we're going to have TWO volume controls again (GGGRRR!!! ), but I bet it'll make your over engineered CD player sound better than ever (and mine too possibly.....). The phono stage should be good too and a great UK made upgrade for Cambridge 640 owners (apologies to NVA, I don't know your products).

I agree with all that, although I actually like dual-mono volume pots! Ultimately, when properly designed, they are more accurate and give better stereo. Phono stages Glenn has always excelled at, and I've yet to hear a better MM valve phono stage than the one inside my Charisma-X, despite having heard some very expensive phono stages both valve and solid-state. My phono stage will be getting better, too, as will the rest of the preamp due to some modifications he will be doing to my preamp and also Ian Walker's Charisma-X.

Glenn is building a pretty serious off-board PSU for our preamps in a separate case; with huge over-specified multiple transformers inside and it will be linked to the preamp itself. This will remove the existing transformer in the preamp from the vicinity of the control circuitry and therefore reduce noise, which should give more headroom, and generally clean up the sound. MOSFET regulation will also be replacing the existing valve type, Alps Black Beauty pots will replace the current Alps Blues, and finally all existing, fairly low grade, RCA sockets will be replaced with Eichmanns.

I'm looking forward to the difference this will make and will report on the forum in due course. The amps should hopefully be ready for the first week in June

Regarding selling to dealers or eBay, Glenn's products have ALWAYS fetched great prices on eBay and I suspect it's us that know, posting on sites like this one, that have kept these prices up, as the great unwashed out there won't know what a Croft product is and may not even care - I can't even state Ken Kessler's helped here as few people buy HiFi Snooze these days.. Dealers on the whole are desperate yet ignorant, pompous a*seh*l*s by and large and either want indefinite loan stock to try to sell from, or will try to shaft the small guy as they themselves are shafted by the big ones.... - if it takes one to know one then I ashamedly hold up my hand, although I hope I improved with age and maturity/knowledge...

Did you used to be a dealer? If so, I didn't know. It's ok, I'll not hold it against you!

Joking aside, I agree entirely with what you've written. Croft equipment will always be niche products aimed at true enthusiasts and not the mass-market, which is exactly what we want. I'm sure Glenn couldn't care less about anything else. He just quietly gets on with what he does best, and that's making world class amplifiers at 'real world' prices.

If Glenn has a small number of friends who happen to be dealers (and I know one very well indeed) then hopefully they'll do a great job in spreading the word and keeping his product "clean."

That's exactly how he'll be promoting and selling his products, as Glenn has a core of tried and tested dealers over the years that he's friends with so I'm sure they'll make sure his products are sold in the right way to people who enjoy music and put sound quality first and foremost with equipment before unnecessary asthetic fripperies and nonsense like WAF factor. We will also help as much as we can here, too.

If he made up some high current mains filters as he used to, or decent, not too expensive interconnects or something, he could possibly sell these on ebay, but I doubt he'd have the inclination to do so, or the time to be honest.....

I didn't know he made stuff like that, but like you say I doubt he'll have time at the moment for anything else other than designing his new product range and doing some jobs for customers with existing Croft amplifiers. It's definitely great news that Glenn is back on the scene, and good that this unfortunate business with Amar doesn't seem to have jaded his enthusiasm. I'll be sharing a curry and a few beers with him soon with friends so I'm sure there will be many interesting things to discuss!

Marco.