HiFi News review of Solo - better late than never

I've just stumbled across this link.

BAK wrote: What the consumer has to wait for and therefore miss since 2004!

Indeed! Who knows how many missed sales resulted from this omission in 2004? Plus of course the raised awareness that Graham knows his stuff . . . .

How different could things have been over the last 9 years?

Nobody can know, and I couldn't say, but reviews are the lifeblood of a budding high fidelity business, and back in 2004 we could have done with that review.

The same magazine gave me the Era Gold V/Elevator EXP award that Peter mentioned, but some considerable confusion surrounded it... something like "if you don't pay for and attend the awards dinner it will be given to somebody else". That was how the then distributor interpreted it to me.

I refused to attend because that would be a bought review which I won't do. Somehow I got the award - I think the distributor may have had to pay - I just don't know...

On receiving the award via the distributor it had a chunk out of it, and I wasn't too pleased that it said Eva Gold instead of Era Gold.

I remember Stuart Wennen sending me his draft copy of his Era Gold review for Hi Fi World. Reviewers often do that to ensure accuracy of facts and I was sworn to secrecy and I never leaked a word.

After publication I didn't bother using a single quote from it. Why? Because the entire review had been re-written in favour of a Trichord product!

Stuart Wennen couldn't stop phoning me to apologise and after the event became a good friend. Not so the editor, and I'll not mention his name here.

I may have been imagining it, but I could swear a "closed shop" was closing in on me when other reviews painted a black picture of the Era Gold V: Choice and TNT's Werner Ogiers gave it the thumb's down (later re-written by Ogiers in a more favourable light).

I gave the Choice Era Gold V sample to Rome Castellanes (my US distributor) and he liked it so much he sent it to Michael Fremer who told America that it was miraculous and that he meant miraculous, but then he loaned it to Bob Reiner who gave it a thumb's down in favour of Creek.

Michael Fremer wasn't at all influenced by that and continues to use that same Era Gold V - and recommend it - to this day (as some will have noted from his cartridge tests).

TNT's Geoff Husband couldn't understand the negative reviews either and requested it along with the Elevator EXP, so it made it a different test to the lone Era Gold V test by Ogiers. He wrote that it was the best MC combo he had ever heard.

What Hi-Fi also gave it five stars but then went on to list it as a four star product... I asked why, and it was duly corrected to five.

Maybe I thought there was a conspiracy against me or the Era Gold V, or both? Or perhaps it was just a matter of taste?

All I know is that 10 years later it's still a highly sought after phono stage.

Yes, I suppose it could have been different, but I'm not in the business of making accusations, although I' feel that with such a miraculous phono stage, as well as the Solo, I could have reaped a little more benefit.

I saw where you have a reviews section on the home page, but down the page  where one has to scroll down.