Gear - How much should we be paying.

Yes and don't forget the attenuator switches themselves aint cheap either and there are two mono switches in a P90.

I believe RD got the attenuators already built from Hifi collective (£130 per channel) using the shinkoh tantalum resistors until they became unavailable in certain values.

If i wasn't able to build my own then yes i would probably be willing to pay the asking price. Being able to build my own stuff then i too like you tend to forget about the labour, time spent working on the business which is not actually assembly. RD admitted on hfs that he made more money on the more expensive models to enable the entry models to be cheaper.

Given Macca's comments above about how he could not tell the difference between the P90SA and a MF £10K pre then i would say that the NVA is the bargain of the century if it works well with your sources, power amps and interconnects.

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This is true. The resistors alone in the P90sa cost £150. The Perspex cases are more expensive than an off the shelf stamped metal Chinese equivalent. I baked off the P90SA against (amongst others) the Music First reference passive at ten grand. I couldn't hear any difference. The owner of the Music First reckoned the MF was better, but only slightly.







Admittedly being a transformer passive the MF might be more compatible with a wider range of power amps. But ten grand! Given there must be a thousand rip off cables and components on the market to pick from it was a poor choice of example.







On a separate point no-one seems to be taking labour charges into account. What is a reasonable hourly rate for a man to pay himself to build cables and components. Twenty quid an hour? You can pay £150 hour to have an EE fault find on a dodgy component. On top of the time taken to actually build there is the time spent sourcing and buying components, taking orders, selling, promoting, dealing with customers questions and issues.







Then there's 20% corporation tax, and, if applicable 20% VAT to consider.







Let's be realistic here about what it costs to make something and sell it without ending up broke or working for less than minimum wage



I refer back to this post from Macca on the cables thread which for me says it all really. And £20 hr labour is way too low if you are running a business with all the costs associated with that. It is only when you have your own business that you really know the full extent of what it costs to be in business. Doing it as a hobby is a different matter. Price your own labour at what ever level you like. It's only you that is losing out.

I have a pair in my system right now from CD to pre and delighted with the sound they make.  Between pre and power I have a very expensive Studio Connections cable which would easily show up any shortfalls in the Edge interconnect. 

Cables have no sound. All cables are bad for the sound. Those which are perceived as good, are those having the least bad influence on the sound. The perfect cable would have no effect at all, but it doesn't exist!

I'm just wondering which cables have the most non-effect if you don't use them.

Strange seeing a PCB at the backplate. Probably for ease of production, but I'd have preferred direct wiring.

Ye possibly but I've never really noticed a difference between p2p and PCB and I tried both extensively with my phonostage development. It seems the better the PCB quality, the less it made any difference. Isolated test example though.

It's another cost in that preamp. Pcbs aren't free and that adds to my point.

Half the price for the same spec minus a couple of inputs and outputs and they aren't worth an extra £350

This is all very odd. Something is worth what someone is willing to pay for it, no more, no less. If you stick something in the classifieds at what you think is a fair price and it doesn't sell, then it's overpriced. If you prefer passive amp A over (cheaper) passive amp B, then it's up to you, and nobody else, to decide whether the improvement is worth the price differential or not. I don't know why people are getting their keks in a twist about it.

Does have vat, they come from Poland! He just prefers USD to Euro.

No duty, nothing. It's £300 + £20 delivery all in and how is it apples and oranges?

It price of a preamp vs price of a preamp.

You are justifying prices rather than challenging them.

I saw those dual mono polish selector boxes several years ago but thought them impractical (like so many cheap preamps) due to the lack of inputs. If you were comparing to NVA there is a lot more connectivity there. My only gripe with NVA is the small volume knob. Anyway I really can't be doing with two vol knobs or stepped attenuators. I've decided that less boxes is more practical. Now using an integrated that produces 500W per channel and volume is electronic. Sounds none the worse for this hi-tech approach. Something that small scale manufacture does not find easy to achieve. Actually I doubt this could be done for the asking price by a small manufacturer in UK. British smallish brand now Austrian owned and made in Taiwan. May look expensive but would be hard to produce bespoke casework and electronics (or buy in) doing this at home. NVA 100W monos cost £2k without tax plus £650 for passive plus interconnect. Then you have to factor in own brand speaker cable. If Savvy can reproduce these models they will be a lot higher price. Of course if you can do work at home to industry standards and meet CE regs and don't cost your own labour it may save you a few quid. People seem to forget that once the operation is bigger than your bedroom or garage you need a factory plus assembly staff plus admin, accountant etc. To achieve even the inflated prices due to dealer mark ups and make a profit there have to be some serious efficiencies of medium to large scale manufacture. Hence small operations charging £10K + for small production runs. They need a high end exclusivity selling point to move this kit.

Behave.