Spring News

It’s spring!

You can tell it’s getting desperate when the fact that we’ve tidied the office genuinely runs though my head as a potential topic. Mind you, those of you used to our chaotic mess may well be surprised. Mick is certainly very much in his element and his desk is by far the tidiest.

Ukraine

We can hardly ignore this. If you need a nudge towards finding ways to help, DEC are here and Red Cross here. We’ve chipped in some support to DEC but many other agencies are doing good work too.

If you would rather go more ‘native’, Audio Works, have shared the details of where donations can go directly to those supporting refugees in Poland: Parafia Prawoslawna sw. Trojcy w Gorlicach PL17 1140 2004 0000 3002 8095 2700 with a note Ukraina. Kod SWIFT : BREXPLPWMBK

Splendid! With all potential new business now cancelled at a stroke, I might as well get on with our first newsletter in almost three months. Good to see that I’ve not lost my touch!

With a slow rate of supply from several quarters and price rises being announced quite regularly, the news narrative is becoming predictable. There is some positive news, but we might as well dispense with the dismal stuff first.

Kudos

First of all, Kudos have announced that they have no choice but to increase their prices from April 1st 2022. The current prices are here and the April ‘22 ones here.

Order before the end of March and save! Kind of . . . 🙂 We have pretty much all the models on dem, if not all the colours. This is the month of opportunity.

Russell K

It’s a broadly similar situation with Russell K too, although, other than knowing that it’ll be significant, we’ve yet to gain access to the new prices. After their initial arrangements where Russell K cabinets were made and populated in Poland, production has now moved completely to the UK.

Cabinets are now finished to a rather higher standard than before and are very much in line with the standards you will see from the other quality UK manufacturers. With the previous pricing being based on the Polish construction costs, the level of price increase will exacerbated. As with Kudos, current prices will be maintained for orders placed before April.

We have our new demonstration Red 150SE speakers just settling in. At time of writing, the entire range is here for those who want to compare and contrast.

Chord Mojo 2

There is some properly good news in the shape of the arrival of the long anticipated Mojo 2.

It’s even better sounding, far more fully featured and still fully compatible with Poly. Chord’s latest super micro headphone DAC is arguably even better value than before despite the £50 price rise. We have it in stock and on demonstration.

Linn Trade-ups

A little reminder that the new high end Linn streamer is really rather wonderful. It is a proper breakthrough single box product that is agreeably compact, tactile and yet extremely talented in presenting music from either local or online databases.

I cannot believe how many opportunities to swap ‘c’ or ‘x’ for ‘k’ have just been missed in that paragraph.

On the subject of swapping letters, the new (scarily) high end Ekstatik cartridge is a humdinger too. In common with the other Linn MC cartridges, there is a trade-up allowance to be had when moving from an older, or lesser, (Linn) model.

With Klimax DSM, there are some generous upgrade terms against older Klimax streamers.

The new and extremely impressive Radikal II is also available as an upgrade over older models. We do the work here and Andy is being kept busy with both this and Karousel upgrades.

Despite the gloom, Linn seem to be on something of a roll.

New Rega Saturn MkIII

Now freely available and on demonstration is the new Rega DAC cum CD player. In truth, the differences over the old model are simply aesthetic, bringing its appearance into line with the newish Aethos and what will replace the now discontinued Elicit. Change is happening. But gently.

Sales of affordable Rega turntables have been really buoyant for us and, after a quiet start, the Io is hitting its stride too. I’d still say that the Brio amplifier is well worth the extra outlay.

Mind you, I’d say that again about the Elex. It’s all push, with us.

Snake Oil goes mainstream

The flurry of interest in the ADOT optical ethernet kit has led to an associated interest in power supplies to power the converter points. Going the extra distance to get the new Plixir Elite 5v supplies for this has been judged to be very worthwhile by a couple of our previously level headed customers who have turned positively evangelical on the subject.

Since they have acquired our ‘one to show, one to go’, we need to get some more to find out for ourselves.

This, plus the various higher end switch offerings from Melco, Innuos and the NuPrime (above) have kept several of our customers very happy indeed.

And then there are the MusicWorks mains blocks. . .

There are some plans afoot for events at St Cecilia’s in the summer and we really must look at what we could do with Audio Show East.

Please stay in touch with us. In the meantime, all the best from Andy, Mick and me.