How To Be A 28 Year Old Know It All

Michael Fearnley hides behind his anonymity of Michael Fidler on the ASR forum, and rubbishes my legendary Era Gold V phono stage to promote his Spartan 10 for commercial gain.

Manufacturers might secretly hate each other's guts but at least we don't slander each other to steal orders.

The entire Spartan 10 page is a continuation of his ASR forum Era Gold V put-down in every detail, except from coming out and naming it.

His circuit, which I've been told he thinks is something special, is no technically different from the vast majority of NFB filter phono stages. On another of his pages, the phono stage RIAA amplifier is by a dual NE5532 op-amp. The op-amp hails from 1976 so is hardly state of the art today. Strip away the a.c. coupling of an early Gram Amp 1 or 2, and it's essentially the same schematic.

That is followed by a passive section that mixes left and right channels at low frequency, and is followed by a Sallen and Key "low frequency" filter. The last time I saw that circuit was in a Rek-o-Cut product.

By the looks of things, "he's copy and paste" and then has the nerve to trash my reputation.

He's really pushing hard to get a foot in the door. First by rubbishing a 20 year old A-list design, the Era Gold V, which I designed when he was 8! And milking the same old drivel that will put most old enthusiasts to sleep - we've heard it all before!

He boasts his superiority by specification comparison without a clue about the reasons for the Era Gold V's design choices.

He boasts about his power supply but where's his transformer centre-tap? It has no mid-point reference? It has a single a.c. voltage coming from a Mascot wall wart. You can't get three connections from a two pole DC jack?

As a UK limited company he's in breach of the law for not providing a trading address. So for his customers sakes, here are his details. And if they aren't correct, then the real Classic Audio Ltd will be rather vexed.