Otomon Labs - WARNING

In theory, grounding with a single point only halves residue voltage. You need at least couple of grounding points at your "local" ground to get an efficient ground.

 

Ok, well as I omitted and others have stated, just use a pipe in your house.

The point is, it's not rocket science and Ken the great EE could have watched a YT video. I'm guessing there are at least 13 on "how to add electrical ground in my house".

 

Yes, attach it to whatever is grounded properly. Should work.

And when needed, couple of these grounding rods wont break the bank either.

 

I read through the thread diagonally.. I was wondering.

1. What kind of noise is it? 50Hz 60Hz (your local mains voltage Freq)

2. If it is the mains voltage noise it can be picked up "phantom" voltage on some structure on the amp that is not properly designed / grounded. It litterally picks up voltage from the "hot" conductor next to it. It can easily be 50 to 100volt , it just carries very little charge usually. So this is probably going to radiate its field to things that it is not supposed to. I am not an expert on amp design. Just couple of ideas came to mind on the subject.

3. It could be the transformer humm.. ?

4. If you have more such issues , It wouldnt hurt to let an electrican(or use a multimeter) check your grounds . You might have an ungrounded socket or maybe someone messed up your power cabinet, junction boxes and the ground is actually missing (I have seen it happen with ppl).

 

I'm sure your advice is sound (no pun intended), but where general things are concerned, bear in mind that @rhythmdevils is hardly a newcomer to plugging stuff in. He's probably played with more hifi kit than many of us have ever dreamt of.

On the other hand, of course, we can all miss the obvious. That I've dealt with dozens of computers is no excuse for the support guy not to start with the question, "Are you sure it's plugged in?"

 

I get that rhythmdevils is probably not super interested in this stuff atm and he has payed 3k+ ? for the amp and it is not working as supposed to.

Regarding experience... There are no know its all... rather there are people who know parts of how something work. Well thats what I have experienced anyway.

And of course it is useful to go through a list of things to check + keep an open mind.

 

Refund. The customer shouldnt mess with the internals. If other similar systems work fine it is the amp. Case closed.

 

I totally agree. But... How many of us, if there are no stickers, wouldn't take a sneaky look?

 

This. No customer should be expected to know about cable grounds in different countries or to open the amp. If it doesn't work, he must send it for repair (shipping paid by seller) or get a refund. Everything else is redundant.

 

@rhythmdevils --- any update? Either news or your own thoughts?

 

I can’t read minds*, so I can only go by what I see. @rhythmdevils shared a bad experience, explained his intent is to spare potential buyers from similar issues, and documented his experience. This not being a court to find who is right or wrong, I think at best one says “thanks for sharing” and that’s that. If one disagrees and has other data, you say so and share in hope of informing the hobbyists.

I did not like the thread except for one epic reuse of a hard-to-pull-off joke (“Does this mean no loaner then?”). So I hope we can now all get drunk and hear some tunes and move on. Life’s too f'ing brittle.

*yet… bwahahaha

 

You can get drunk and listen to music any time you like. Meanwhile, a guy still has $3,000's worth of junk on the table.

I know. There is nothing that we can actually do about that. Except, of course, not buy Otomon amps. But we can at least say something useful. Or hey, get drunk and... well, whatever. Enjoy your whatever.

 

Yeah, what a drag. No disagreement there.

 

Even without RD's post, there was never any danger of me buying a $3000 amp from a boutique builder.

 

Sorry for the lack of updates.

Thank you everyone for the thoughtful and kind responses.

I'm returning the amp for a refund but eating the return shipping to Japan which will not be cheap. Hopefully PirateShip will save me from ruin.

I'll post an update with more info when I'm able to...

 

We're going pillaging?

 

That's a bummer dude. Sorry it didn't work out, but I'm glad it's just the shipping.

 

I hope that goes ok and you get your refund promptly.

The shipping is the cost of a lesson in life: don't give heaps of money to unknown amp builders! I have a feeling that you will never, ever, do so again.

The bad taste of the experience is probably as bad as the financial loss.

 

That is too bad... I know you had such high hopes for this amp! Did you ever try the ground lifting power cord you mentioned you had on order? Just curious if there was any merit to the builders claim that this would eliminate the buzzing.

 

Sorry to resurrect this thread but I needed to respond to a few things to wrap it up.

First, a shout out to Paypal for an email I just got telling me my account was being filed under "High Volume Dispute Fee tier" which reduces my PayPal protections and their responsibilities to protect me. Likely because I paid for the amp in 3 payments, the downpayment, a payment for an upgrade to input transformers, and the final payment plus shipping, each of which I had to dispute as separate cases. I've had a PayPal account for 20 years and this is the first dispute I have filed with them. I even got a bad tube on ebay and the seller wouldn't refund me and I didn't manage to file a dispute. I use PayPal for nearly all my online transactions. So I'm now having to deal with this and PayPal customer service, which you all know is not fun or easy. Thanks Ken.

Thank you to the many of you who reached out (including @atomicbob via pm) worried about my safety in following Ken's "troubleshooting" advice. I did not attempt any of it, I could tell by the way he responded, the language he used, and frankly, the things he did not say like "sorry the amp is not working" or something along those lines, just immediately defensive and telling me it was not broken, but my fault and I needed to "trouleshoot"

I honestly hate making a thread like this that may affect someone's reputation. But I felt like I owed it to this community to make this experience public when Ken had so little regard for my experience as a customer. He only cared about his money. He didn't care about me getting a usable or good sounding amp, or my experience in the slightest. I'm starting my own company modding orthos, and have worked free lance as a photographer for years, I know it's not possible to please everyone. Especially certain customers. But it's hopefully the goal to try to please your customers in general.

My amp quest for my orthos may seem like a chore or a PITA to some from the outside, but to me it's a whole lot of fun and excitement. I of course cannot afford to keep all of these amps while starting a company. But I can afford to buy them temporarily used to try them and wind up keeping the few that are the best for my various orthos. Which is what I will do and why I'm buying used. I've already narrowed things down a lot and found some great amps. I'm getting closer.

My modded orthos to me are works of art, I make them using the same creative process as my photography or any of my other creative endeavors. So finding the right amp for them that makes them sound the way I know they are capable of sounding is important to me and part of the project, part of making my vision a reality. I know they can sound better than out of the LauX and I have just recently found a couple tube amps that are in fact much better and they aren't all super expensive, one is very cheap in fact. I think I still have improvements to be found, I think my orthos are still better than the amps I have let them be. Mostly because most amps are made for electrodynamics. Not a lot of effort has been put into amps specifically for orthos until recent super expensive amps like the WA33 and Felix Envy, neither of which I am buying.

This made me think of one more aspect of Ken's service. The way he packaged the heaviest amp I have ever owned or tried to hold to ship it across the world. He did not double box it. He wrapped it in Saran Wrap (so it wouldn't get any visible damage), put it in a box about the size of the amp, and inserted 1 or 2 1/2" white plastic foam sheets on every side of the amp. It obviously got an extreme beating coming all the way from Japan. Even if just shipped within the ConUS, this packing was not enough to keep the amp from getting huge shocks from people trying to carry it. This was not a box that was easy to carry and was surely dropped, mishandled all the time by people who could not barely hold it.

Here is ai picture of how it was shipped to me minus the Saran Wrap. Not nearly enough. Look at how Eddie Current and Ampsandsound amps, etc, are shipped surrounded by foam in much bigger boxes than this.