It's that banned video, The £25,000 Pre-amp that went wrong - Tom Evans Mastergroove SR mkIII

[@MrAustrokiwi]

Message to Tom Evans: I, like many, am liking this re-upload as a time honored two finger salute to you.

[@ropeburn6684]

The two-handed salute with one finger each 😂

[@takeiteasy6154]

here here !

[@knietiefimdispo2458]

Three thumbs up. It's up to you to imagine my third finger ;- )

[@G-ra-ha-m]

He blames the customers for failures in his gear, and threatens any detractors, yes, what a piece of. His mechanical layout is a total shambles and the electronic design is nothing that hasn't been done since the 1980s.

[@Blutnase]

[@john8451]

Well done to everyone who has re-uploaded this video!

[@bosleyjr]

Tom Evans: look up the Streisand Effect...

[@marstedt]

Thank you for posting this video and supporting Mend It Mark.

[@oliverisailovic]

Big support for our Mark!!!

[@TheJamiejosh]

I have no doubt Mark will appreciate all the support, good work with the reups lads!

[@martinfurtner2136]

Mark is a phenomenal technician, he excels not only in electronics, but in many other skills from fabricating metal parts on a lathe to expert woodworking, to music. A truly gifted person. And he is such a humble and friendly guy with a great sense of humour. The truly great are always that way in my experience. We need more such people on this aching world, therefore he has my full support.

[@derekdartes3573]

His names Mark ain't it?

[@martinfurtner2136]

@derekdartes3573 You are right, sorry.

[@redpoll4628]

He said Mark

[@derekdartes3573]

@@redpoll4628 He changed it after I pointed out he called him Mike in the original post. Keep up.

[@PhotographyInFlight4183]

Hear, hear.

[@geoffwebber8272]

The internet, strikes back

[@SuperLordofwar1]

I'm just going trough yt, slapping a like on every reupload of this video LOL

[@ronkelley5348]

Same :)

[@DavidLightman]

it.... is....everywhere!, so far i counted 19 reuploads including the one by the master Louis Rossman which already has over 150K views :) streisand effect in full swing

[@SuperLordofwar1]

@@DavidLightman In hifi community - The Evans Effect 😂

[@vinny142]

Thank you for your support!

[@nickwalters5380]

Keep reposting folks. Such fun.

[@Seftdelmer]

Blimey, imagine watching this after buying one of these.

[@pw7752]

Fools and their money...

[@G-ra-ha-m]

Have you seen inside the Linear A amplifier? Search and you shall laugh! It's even worse.

[@James-dt7ky]

Tom: "You won't be able to fix it." Mark: "Game on."

[@G-ra-ha-m]

If Tom was the least bit responsible, he would simply have fixed it in the first place. Given the huge price changing a customer thousands for a fault it develops - one of Tom's own making, the use of tantalums, is almost as cheeky as daring others to fix it, preferring it to become landfill.

[@James_Bowie]

Tom Evans: Goose of the Year 2024

[@neoplan6116]

I will not look the whole video again, I am just here for the comment and then I will let it run til the end in the background - just for the algorithm - lets spread it!😉

[@ForumCat]

Me too!

[@helmut3356]

The shielding in this device, is simply amazing. I hope it's patented. NASA would surely copy it.

[@twocentman]

😂 The bad stuff comes from the top. Useless shielding by the way. He should use conductive paint for the box instead. Cheers.

[@boofuls]

Perhaps NASA should copy the card shims 😮

[@matthewn1805]

Strange no concern about crosstalk with all those loose wires!!

[@ramalama9650]

Whoo hooo, 'Mend it mark', what a star! As for Mr Evans? Shot himself in the foot on this one. He'll never sell his tat after this.

[@michaelgraflmusic]

Barbara!

[@solar1sound]

Thanks for uploading, "In Mend It Mark" we trust :)

[@cfulton8742]

Congrats Tom, you just made Mark famous.

[@sdjgfashjasbfasd]

Just wait for the 2025 Tom Evans Mastergroove SR mkIII. Complete with high end potted circuit boards.

[@Niels_Dn]

I’m not an audio electronics engineer, but aerospace electronics engineer and this looks like some really amateur level PCB design. Also the system design and component selection for a 25k selling price could have been way higher grade. Crazy that these guys get away with such designs under the flag of “audiophile”.

[@JohnWiku]

It's all audiofoolery 😂😂

[@henkvharten8465]

@@Niels_Dn you means audiofoolish

[@JasDarc]

Moral of the story - make decent products or take the consequences.

[@kay110]

Its a very 'Home Made' poor quality device based on stock circuit 'bricks'. Even the screening boards on the top have holes drilled at more or less random centres.

[@James-dt7ky]

Here to support Mark.

[@henkvharten8465]

If you look closely at the design of this pre-amp, you can clearly see that this Tom Evans guy has alienated himself from a well-built amplifier design. i have seldom seen so much stupidity in one box..

[@joefish6091]

Agreed, way too over complicated and fragile, too much waiting to go wrong.

[@NickT6630]

Thanks for uploading 👍👍👍

[@bukwok]

quite a simple design, and the whole thing looks like a diy project ,but 25000?? lot of hi end hifi crazy expensive, but lot of them at least make it looks expensive , this one looks little bit cheap isn't??

[@gearloose703]

reminds me of my own projects, those which i am not so proud of

[@adamsaint2890]

"Audiophile" gear has to be one of the best scams ever. Very successful and clever people fall for it, repeatedly, swearing they can hear a difference between this and a unit costing 100th of the price.

[@rjy8960]

There is a difference between audiophiles and audiophools.....If you don't understand electronics, you can get scammed to heaven and back.

[@chrizzly9222]

yes and no. in some cases, it does make sense to spend more and you can hear it - but overall, you are absolutely right. no need for 500$ gold dust alien technology cables - the 15$ ones will work just aswell.

[@cherryjuice9946]

@@chrizzly9222 Are you sure I didn't need to buy those gold dust alien cables? You mustn't expect them to work right out of the box. They need a "break in period". Normally the time it takes to drink 3 beers.

[@joefish6091]

I fondly remember ILP, affordable and did the job.

[@1wibble230]

It's the difference between manufacturers that provide full specs and have detailed data sheets on output, vs those that provide very little real world info and just present a glowing word salad :D

[@andrewpetley7008]

Impressive workshop, which would be useless without the knowledge to go with it! well done interesting video. Thank you

[@lemagreengreen]

I get the feeling what is going here is a manufacturer who puts a very high value on their time. Nothing in here is expensive or special but is undoubtedly hand assembled. Of course it does highlight that paying someone £25k to hand make something that could be machine made to a higher quality is very silly.

[@deeceeke]

mainly that the manufacturer, who supposedly builds it by hand himself, is not able to repair it

[@thomasmaughan4798]

Thank you for posting this.

[@maddog31255]

£20k ???.... Here I use a Linn Linto connected to a Dynavector XX2MK2 MC Cart. Great wee video with proper explanations for the lay personae!. 73's de GM0PHG !

[@Rondo2ooo]

I have a Pro-Ject, I think it was 150 $ or so 18 years ago. Elac 796 on a Thorens 126. Does a fantastic job.

[@johnb80]

Mark, as always, brilliant fix, great video and fantastic job. Thank you for sharing your work with us and Im sure everyone will join me in wishing you a very Merry Christmas and I look forward to more of your video's in 2025. Thank you very much.

[@5150TJT]

Home made job 😂😂😂 23 grand yeah ok bro...

[@dougcox835]

"[I]n all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right ... to be confronted with the witnesses against him." This is in the constitution and applies to criminal cases but I would think that private institutions like KZbin would comply with this and at least state exactly what the copyright violation was. Also, innocent until proven guilty should apply. If someone claims a copyright violation they should provide proof of the violation and allow the violator to remedy the situation.

[@toG-i9i]

I wonder how much they paid the hobbyist who had to assemble those circuit boards,poor guy obviously worked without supervision too.

[@marcoboursier1958]

exactly. this is DIY stuff...terribly disappointing

[@grabannon]

Someone needs to do a rough estimate of how much all the materials might cost. Then we can see how much he charge for the component matching. Complete guess but less than a grand I'd say.

[@Joe-by8jh]

Possibly hires kids after school to assemble his equipment.

[@frankgeffe9599]

Great work!

[@MrAletube]

i'd like to know the whole procedure followed by the builder to determine a repair bill of 1000's to replace a shorted 10 cents cap,which he wouldn't substitute anyway,since all the supply boards are the same and made of generic parts,only thing he had to do was substitute the whole faulty board and charge for the labour,maybe 5 hours total plus electronics and the chassis parts broken

[@Turboy65]

Tom Evans Audio, I would never buy your products.

[@stuartthurstan]

What a brilliant video this is. I've watched it about 6 times now on different channels. Good job Mr Evans. I can't speak to the quality of your electronics or audio design, but as someone with 30 years of experience in mechanical design and construction, I can say that for the price, the design and construction of your product is absolute garbage.

[@tubical71]

I'm here for the algorithm. And set a Mark for Mark.

[@psibug565]

The Pre-Amp is only a Grand it’s the dip switches that cost the money.

[@chrlz904]

About the dip switches... did I miss the bit where they were covered?

[@medicallyunexplainedsymptoms]

​@@chrlz904 I would assume they're for setting the resistances and capacitances for the specific phono cartridge being used.

[@gearloose703]

Wait is that case laser cut acrylic? That is very, very cheap.

[@lemagreengreen]

Looks like it, the way it cracked seems very like acrylic. 10mm or so sheet I guess.

[@martinfurtner2136]

And the cardboard strips. Are these made from Rolex gift cases? Truly state of the art.

[@robertcroft2591]

That's hockey!!

[@clockdva20]

He should be glad someone other than himself can fix this item. Cuts his workload down, whatever the background before it was sent to this KZbin channel or however it got so damaged. Tom Evans would have been served better just swallowing the costs and paying for it to be repaired as a gesture of good faith. Instead getting the Video pulled and then threatening legal action. Then having a shit storm of a backlash that went way beyond just various social media channels but even into the main stream media and major News channels across the world. Bringing his high end laying bare the build quality and questionable quoted performances statistics, for a 25000 pound amp. Sometimes it pays to think of the results of your actions before you take action and is there a better less damaging route. Now that is too late.

[@FireMunki63]

What an amazing Job by an amazing guy!

[@mrd.g.2567]

lol $25K 😂

[@randywilliams4325]

1 British lb = $1.26 last I checked . Over $30k

[@copernicofelinis]

Dang, I was here for the "up yours, Tom Evans" comment, but apparently I'm too early. I will come back later. 😀

[@nigel8247]

Tom sounds like a wonderful sincere guy😂😂 Remember what goes around comes around. Good luck Mark you have more talent in your little finger nail…… And KZbin come on wake up chaps..

[@disklamer]

Did not survive the drop test.

[@TheBudgie29]

PS, With how thick that top half was. You would have thought. He would have Pushed Bolts, like the ones holding the four legs on. Through the Bottom. Right through the Posts of the Circuit Boards. And Into Inserts In the top Casing. Holding the Whole thing together from Inside. You could also put Rubber buffers on the top and bottom to tighten things a little more, and stop vibration from outside the unit as well.

[@janisvaskevics93]

Thumbs up for this video and middle fingers up for Tom Evans! 😂

[@Justin-fy7xk]

Its unstoppable for Tom now. Its a snowball effect.

[@abwino]

Thank you reposting this video!!

[@twobob]

solid.Respect

[@leokimvideo]

Drama, always a winner for a KZbin producer, the attacking companies always end up looking like idiots, maybe get Louis Rossmann to cover your drama, he will push it to the absolute next level in a snap.

[@M0UAW_IO83]

Not my drama and already covered by Louis Rossman.

[@itechflagstaff]

Thank you!

[@johnmercier8503]

Tom Evans should have to buy back every one of these 'rare' (cough-bs-cough) amps.

[@ropeburn6684]

Filing off numbers is what criminals do with guns for the black market. 😂

[@CyberDunk2077]

So if he has sold 58 of these, that is £1,450,000. blimey! And that is just the ones he has sold up to the point this one was made….

[@hotdogvonpaule2686]

hey tom.. how is your day?

[@rjy8960]

I think he's had a bit of a crappy couple of weeks :)

[@salviaspuzzle]

Keep on spreading it. 👏👏🤘

[@michider4462]

Thank you

[@MGoudsmits]

well done ! stop the fake copyright bans.

[@stevefoudray487]

I love a repair challenge, but that construction is wobbly bobby. I hope your theme music is safe!

[@digitaltait]

Came across this quote from the Tom Evans website… “Q. My turntable sounds poor. A. Sell off or give away your poor quality Phono Stage and buy a Tom Evans Phono Stage and live happily ever after! 😂

[@JamesCairney]

If this thing cost 500 quid to make (probably less) then the markup on this "item" is 5000% Thats some amount of profit for an obvious box of crap

[@joefish6091]

This device is an engineering dog's dinner of fragility.

[@davecook8378]

All Tom Evans had to do was ignore the video, and even the Mend It Mark subscribers would have forgotten it within a week. The kind of people that would drop 25k GBP on a phono-pre would certainly have never known about it. Now it's going to be part of the "lore" of bad business behavior on audio forums along with Monster Cable and Bose.

[@williamalexanderdunk7165]

I think this attempt with the copyright strike on MIM channel has backfired for Tom!

[@Fizban481]

10k to repair

[@williamsmith9561]

This preamp is a classic example of the Emperor's New Clothes. The seller has exploited the placebo effect by using superlatives in the advertising. It’s a case of ‘a fool and his money soon parted.

[@SeanChYT]

This is the Tom Evans Mastergroove.

[@TheBudgie29]

Well done to the up-loader for this. If this one Is faulty. How many of the other 57 sold have this very Fault?. Good On You Mark.

[@janisvaskevics93]

Funny how this is almost the only theme of videos you'll see if you search for Tom Evans... 😂

[@rhodaborrocks1654]

I absolutely hate tantalum capacitors, they grow internally, I've had them turn microphonic, become resistors, short circuit, but by far the best is when there's just a pair of leads sticking up out of the board and a little pile of ash, so I don't have to look at the stupid thing.

[@M0UAW_IO83]

Colleague of mine has a scar on his forefinger because he discovered the 'singing' noise in a SMPSU was coming from a tantalum cap. He also discovered he could vary the pitch by squeezing it. Just before it exploded and forced a shard of epoxy into his finger.

[@thomasmaughan4798]

To give credit where it's due, the idea of using multiple op-amps in parallel to reduce noise is brilliant; but even better I think is not to use "op amps" at all. I have so much environmental noise that a bit of noise from the pre-amp isn't even a concern but your mileage may vary.

[@TerryClarkAccordioncrazy]

Nothing wrong with opamps. It would take an extremely competent discrete design to surpass the performance of the best opamps.

[@razisn]

It may be brilliant but it is not his idea, but summing up is a well known very old tried and tested technique applicable to anything, not just IC pampas. Nothing original here, it is taught in engineering school. Btw an op-amp does not need to be an IC op-amp, it can be a discrete one. Op-amp is a design concept not a particular part. Good IC op-amps tend to be much better within their operating envelope than what any average designer can come up using discrete components.

[@TerryClarkAccordioncrazy]

@razisn That's correct, I should have said there's nothing wrong with opamp ICs as such. In fact Stan Curtis made his System A preamp using opamps built from discrete transistors. One of the Naim preamp designs uses a bunch of transistors in parallel at the input stage to reduce noise by averaging. There isn't any magic in making a good preamp, just engineering principles taught in every degree and published in textbooks and reference designs.

[@paulp4243]

I'd start with a check of all those Tantalium caps. Notorious for going noisy or S/C.

[@atgv43]

The only master here is Mark.

[@itsonlyme9938]

Tom evans I salute you with my two fat fingers

[@zogzog1063]

Has to be a like and subscribe. Thanks for sharing dude.

[@M0UAW_IO83]

Thanks for the sub! FWIW, I didn't repost this video for likes or subscribes because that feels almost dishonest but thank you

[@ThePlexman]

I think we all know who the genius at work actually is and it sure isn’t Mr Evan’s 😂

[@Andrew_Whiteford]

Did I miss the DIP switches explanation ??

[@metatron007]

It has gone international thank goodness

[@ianemery2925]

I used to work for a small audio company that ground part numbers off - he would charge 100x the actual part of the wholesale price of the part. I hope you are using silver solder for all the repair joints [wink].

[@M0UAW_IO83]

I will admit to having ground numbers off parts on some low cost products I'd designed as add-ons for a larger, very expensive piece of diagnostic equipment after finding a staff member had stolen and copied a fairly simple double sided PCB to sell for cash to our customers, he wasn't smart enough to work out what the ground off part numbers were on other designs. (low cost being £100 and very expensive being £17,000)

[@clivevreeswijk4555]

Never did find out what the dip switches did.... Probably some hokus pokus

[@TheStanHill]

Wow. I expected it to be somewhat crude. Low production unit, manual assembly. But this crude? And it was sent by the manufacturer who knew they will be exposed? Makes no sense.

[@digitaltait]

How was this video banned?

[@itsonlyme9938]

Marks video is very popular not so for tom evans.

[@theonlyegg]

Damn, this thing is a joke. This is more or less what I picture inside ALL high-end audio.

[@pauldehaay3730]

cheer up i subscribed ….😂

[@riley-arr-g]

Sweet. That amp looked pants.

[@squicker]

The entire audiophile market is a scam on very gullible people. I love the 'audiophile network cables'. Err, they're Cat6, like the £10.99 ones from Maplin, but if you want to spend £2500 on them for a 'more open sound stage', or some other audiowank, please be my guest!

[@M0UAW_IO83]

I largely agree, the audiophile market is riddled with extremely dodgy claims backing up price tags which would have me seeking legal advice about power of attorney if I found any of my friends or relatives paying them. For example, you can buy 13 amp UK fuses at the bargain price of only £8000 each (that's not a typo, that's eight thousand GB Pounds each, google for Quantum Science Audio (QSA) Gold Extreme Level UK Mains Fuse). The pre-amp featured does at least make an effort to use proven engineering principles even if the implementation and construction appear rather dubious in our opinions and we are all aghast at the price.

[@squicker]

@@M0UAW_IO83 😵😵

[@squicker]

@@M0UAW_IO83 Hilarious. £8000 fuses to be inserted into the same 99p plug, going into the same specification mains wiring 😀

[@robertdubard7959]

I suppose I'm not like most folks, but this annoys me. Mark's content is SO entertaining on its own, the drama around this is simply noise to me and I wish it would STOP.

[@M0UAW_IO83]

I wish the noise were unnecessary but while there are people seeking to stop those like Mark making and posting such useful, infomative content then I'm afraid there has to be the noise or eventually places like youitube will just become a collection of manufacture promo videos with no content worth watching.

[@simonlocke6921]

MasterLoL

and here it is

[@berndkruger5030]

Every reupload is liked and commented on. Has Tom Evans already noticed that his shot backfired?

[@eletroribariba3139]

Perfect ❤

[@D4rkS4v4nt]

At the end of the day a fool and his/her money are easily parted, if anyone spends this kind of money on a phono pre-amp then good luck to them :D For those of us that can see these overpriced audiophile products for what they are, we can be smug with our DIY phono preamps using high quailty components for 1% of the price!