CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

KennyG · Joined: 10 Feb 2007 Posts: 254

Anyone who might think about having their Blu-ray, DVD or CD player mod'ed needs to think twice about using "Reference Audio Mod's" out of Riverside CA.
These people have had my money since Dec 4th, three weeks ago I finally got the player...DOA.
Granted it was only a fuse...but then I noticed the face plate had five small "dings" on the left edge! AND the HDMI input had large scratches all around it!
I was promised a couple Audio grade Isolation transformers for all my trouble, only to be lied to about those too!
Since this happened, I have also received PM's at another forum about this company, and it's not good.
The player is back with Ref Audio, and my credit card company is now handling this matter.
So just a little knowledge, be aware!

Kenny

**kal** · Posted: Wed Apr 22, 2009 2:44 pm Post subject:

That's unfortunate! I bought a bunch of Black Gate electrolytic caps from them years ago... no issues then but then again, all they needed to do was take my money and ship me my order. Mods are a lot touchier.

Kal

draganm · Joined: 08 Mar 2006 Posts: 8990 Location: Colorado

thanks for letin us know Kenny, there's too many AV company's out there built around hollow promises. Sad

ecrabb · Posted: Wed Apr 22, 2009 4:03 pm Post subject:

I just looked at their site... Much of it sounds like audiofool BS to me... No disrespect to you intended, Kenny.

For instance, this jewel of a mod on a Marantz BD player...

emdawgz1 · Joined: 14 Mar 2006 Posts: 7949

I didnt want to say it... but i agree SC. Embarassed

mp20748 · Posted: Wed Apr 22, 2009 7:24 pm Post subject:

aenglish · Posted: Wed Apr 22, 2009 8:09 pm Post subject:

**AnalogRocks** · Posted: Wed Apr 22, 2009 10:01 pm Post subject:

[quote="mp20748"]

ecrabb · Posted: Wed Apr 22, 2009 10:02 pm Post subject:

**AnalogRocks** · Posted: Wed Apr 22, 2009 10:05 pm Post subject:

emdawgz1 · Joined: 14 Mar 2006 Posts: 7949

dturco · Posted: Thu Apr 23, 2009 12:41 am Post subject:

Yeah every where I worked there was some sort of noob gotcha thing Muffler bearing, Sky hook, Envelope strecher. I fell for that one. It was a mailing house and I thought it was like an expander. When I ask my friend he said to me it's out back and then he took me out back, across the parking lot to the bar where we staid for 2 hours.

When we got back it was time to go home, the foreman asked me where I had been. I said looking for the Envelope stretcher that so and so sent me to look for.

So and so got a call to the office. Laughing

Served em right picking on the FNG. Twisted Evil

jkruger · Joined: 24 Oct 2007 Posts: 2435 Location: Carlsbad, CA

In Boy Scouts I fell for the "Left Handed Smoke Shifter". They had me running around for hours looking for that one....

greg_mitch · Joined: 03 May 2006 Posts: 5320

Worked at a grocery store. Always had the new employees fill the drinking fountain. Still laugh about it today.

**AnalogRocks** · Posted: Thu Apr 23, 2009 4:27 am Post subject:

I need a left handed flam baffle and a muffler bearing for my disel powered vacuum cleaner Very Happy

KennyG · Joined: 10 Feb 2007 Posts: 254

Yeah, in the Navy we had the new guy go get us a bucket of "prop wash"...
I don't know about the diodes, but my system is good enough to hear the difference in allot of other things, and this play vs a stock Marantz is one of them.
I will say this player does sound a WHOLE lot better than the stock player, but then with all the mod's it had done to it, it should have.
He's now got the player back, and says he's going to replace the faceplate and send it back, whether I want it or not!
After 5 months I'm done with this company (actually, I think it's just one guy, a Kyle Takenaga) but he's now determined to ram it down my throat...I suppose we'll see what happens.

PJMoore · Joined: 05 Oct 2006 Posts: 99

Our destroyer was in port in Frances. When it was time to leave, we sent a newbie in the engine room up go ask the Captain for the keys so we could "start the engines". It was an oil fired boiler, by the way - no keys. The Captain told him to go see the Commodore for the keys - on the carrier in the next town - and handed him the keys to the Captains in-port car. Off the newbie went. We left without him, admittedly just for a day outing / joy ride for the local government officials.

I found out later the Commodore had a good laugh about the trick, and then turned the tables on all of us. He sent the newbie with the Commodore's aide back to shore on a "wine fact-finding mission" for the day and got the kid totally ripped.

When I was sent by the lead electrician to go back to the shop and get a "Wiggins", describing it as a "box with a spring and a pointer", I knew it was BS. I spent the next hour smoking on the fantail. Imagine my surprise when a very pissed off lead electrician found me and showed me a tester made by the Wiggins Company, spring loaded solenoid and all. Woops!

Sometimes the tables get turned right around.

1031 · Joined: 22 Mar 2006 Posts: 657 Location: Finland

perisoft · Joined: 29 Aug 2007 Posts: 2920 Location: Ithaca, NY

When I worked at Kinko's, I'd occasionally hand customers their jobs across the counter, top toward them, saying, "There was a problem with the run; these all came out upside down". It usually took people ten or fifteen seconds to figure it out.

If you deadpan something well enough, you can get away with the most absolutely egregious bull**** and people will believe it - which, of course, is why KennyG thinks his sounds better after having the "inverse cash infusion" mod done to his wallet. Not to be cruel, KennyG, but there's really only one explanation for your player's improved performance.

**Curt Palme** · Posted: Mon May 25, 2009 2:54 pm Post subject:

Wow, you guys were creative. I never worked at other than very small companies, so big BS stuff never really flew.

I did get creative one day at the night club installation company I worked at, and wired a smoke machine to be triggered by the receptionist opening her desk (got in early one morning and wired a microswitch at the back of the drawer). It would have worked fine, but the other tech came in and decided to use the photocopier right before she came in...which is what I had unplugged to power up the smoke machine. He didn't see the smoke machine, unplugged it, plugged the copier back in. Piss me off.

The only effective one pulled on me was very simple: THe appliance guy popping a paper bag right behind me while I was working on the HV section of an old tube console TV. Bastard! Very Happy