Scammer: TRL (Tube Research Labs) / Paul Weitzel - Page 3

I am a long time audiophile and my username is Grannyring on Audiogon. Look me up and see I am a well respected and heavy user of that site. Well over 350, all positive, transactions on that site. I say this in order to give all of you some perspective on who I am.

I own the TRL Dude preamp, M225 amp, modified Sony CD player and some cables made by Paul of TRL. Why? Because it is the best sounding gear I have owned or heard in my system - period.

Paul and TRL are very nice to deal with and they shipped all of these items to me quickly and answered every phone call and email I have ever sent.

He is a circuit designer of extraordinary skill and ability.
Again, nothing but great things to say about Paul and TRL. Wonderful gear and man.

I am not some quack, brand new to audio, but a very satisfied TRL customer with excellent ears and discernment of people and sound.

This thread seems way out of line and about some other person. It is NOT at all my experince nor the experience of MANY other TRL owners I contacted before buying Paul's gear.

That is my experience and I speak the honest truth about my experience over the past 12 months.

How is your experience relevant to the OP's? If there's one thing I learned is that you can never trust a good person to stay good. If Paul is the person who you say he is, then he wouldn't need other to defend him.

He and his business is fine. No need to defend Paul or the company.Just wanted to share my experience so others could get a more complete picture.

Loving music tonight and enjoying my TRL components so very much. Saw this while playing on the net and had to share my current experience.

That's all.

Take care.

Another voice of support for TRL and Paul Weitzel

I've had both my Sony SCD-CE595 SACD player and STR-DG500 receiver modded by TRL and I am very, very happy with the results for both units. I firmly believe all the "so-called" hype about his mods and my experience is that he is very friendly and patient regarding business matters. I did experience some delays in my orders, however the product was very, very well worth the wait. I recommend TRL without reservation and am also very sad to hear people talking bad about him and his company. I plan on doing business with him in the future and don't for one moment buy into the concept that he is a scammer.

I honestly believe the OP with his pictures, I would have to see pictures of your mods to believe anything.

Those pictures made me feel like he should be paying his customers to be able dump all that cheap junk in there and then covering it all by covering it in epoxy in a haphazard manner. I can't find any other pictures of other TRL mods to compare to either.

I'd love to see these happy customers pop the tops off their modified gear and send us some pictures of the modifications. It would be telling if they opened them up to find a similar mess that does nothing inside.

Wow, that G.T.-800 is pretty impressive. 800 watts/channel in a tube amp???

OP: it looks like your blog has been removed... do you have a link to where the pictures can be found now?

not sure what happened w/respect to the original poster's experience with paul and trl, but i have to say that it is uncharacteristic. i;ve got several pieces of his modded gear and have heard many others. i;ve recommended his mods to several friends who are all very happy with his work.

i can;t see the pix either, but i do know that his mods would not win any modeling contests. the epoxy is for damping, and it is does what it is supposed to do. it is not artistically applied-- aesthetically speaking.

i'd like to see the pix of the dac that he modded, and would love to know how you can prove that he did that work. nothing you;ve said will stop me from continuing to do biz with him, and recommed his work to friends. i'd imagine that most of what he does to machines when he mods them is beyond the comprehension of most of the people who look inside the machines anyway!!!!!!!!!!!!

It would be nice to know what the mods actually are, without the typical "proprietary" nonsense. Real designers and engineers aren't afraid to show people what, exactly, they do. Some people do understand this stuff, after all. Also, it would be nice to know just what goes into those very, very, very expensive amps. I don't care how nice someone is, I want to see why they charge what they do.

uncle erik,

i did not mean to imply that any specific poster here is technically illiterate or uninformed. what i meant to say is that many audiophiles simply believe what they are told, and may reach a conclusion that a mod is no good because it failed to use xyz caps.

as far as revealing what goes into a specific mod, that can be simply giving away one's intellectual property. it's much easier to copy a mod, than it is to develop one.

judging the value of a mod, or a coponent, in dollar-terms is a fairly fuzzy notion, one i don't care to debate in this thread. as may be obvious, i know the weitzels, and think highly of them. putting more posts on this thread just keeps it coming up on the recent posts listing, and perpetuates the negative claims against them.

note well that several people posted in defense of trl, the neagtives were all of the form 'i'd heard that about them' and were not first-hand, substantive, or confirmed.

you seem to be an intelligent well-informed individual and i am glad to be able to discuss this, and related issues with you. if you felt impugned re: the comment about some people not being techincally competant-- i apologize.

best regards for a happy holiday season.

mark

Excuse me for being completely dumb here, but as someone who doesn't own any modded gear...

If my CDP / DAC / whatever were away for 5>7 months, I'd be determined to believe it sounded better on return. Without having the original unit available for a reasonable amount of time, how can people be sure they are getting any improvement?

I was without my proper CDP for 10 months, and when I went back to it, I couldn't believe how good it sounded. It sounded so good I sold my DAC on my return.

I think we need someone to do an A/B of some modded/unmodded units, just to be sure. Not intending to kick up a stink - but if people are paying SERIOUS money, for someone to ****-up (English term for 'mess-up) the innards of their audio gear for no benefit, that's horrific.

[edit] I see the English term is censored, think half a 'cockerel' and you'd be there.

Mark- no hard feelings and all the best to you. The people in this industry I respect are people like this:

OTL DIY Vacuum Tube Amplifiers Stereo Preamplifiers High End Audio Kits

Bruce Rozenblit not only manufactures his gear, but he also publishes his schematics in books. He encourages people to build his circuits. He knows that if someone wants to buy a kit or an assembled unit, it's available at a fair price. Though his intellectual property is out there, he still is able to run a business, make money and earn respect.

Similarly, the amp I picked up recently came with its full schematic. I could clone one if I wanted and I can also do a parts count and see just what went into it. I can also fix it if needed.

Many other manufacturers are quite open about what they do and why they do it. It's not just copying a song or ripping something off, assembling electronics takes skill, tools and experience. Even then, a lot of us DIY people buy assembled products because they're only marginally more than it would cost to assemble it ourselves, minus time and labor. Putting together a professional looking case can take a month or two of evenings and weekends. Also, you don't get a warranty on DIY gear and if you screw up, you better know how to fix it or you'll have an expensive doorstop.

So when someone asks me to pay $140,000 for an amp, I want to know why. Even handcrafted cases made by a machine shop won't run more than a couple thousand. The finest capacitors, resistors and transformers might be another $3,000 or $4,000. Paying someone with a Ph.D. in electrical engineering to assemble it might be a couple thousand. A nice workshop in Beverly Hills might run $5,000 a month. To be fair, let's say it costs $20,000 to manufacture them. So, where does the other $120,000 go?

If someone is asking for a large amount of money, it's fair to ask why. You don't buy a house without checking property values in the neighborhood.

Also, there's no need for secrecy in electronics. Everything can be opened up and reverse engineered. Epoxy can be removed and people with basic skills can trace out what's going on. Most products are torn down by the competitors (this happens in every industry) so once a product ships, the genie is out of the bottle. If something is priced fairly and has actual value, customers usually choose to purchase it over building it themselves. Unless there's a huge discrepancy between price/cost, people will buy as opposed to cloning.

I save everything. A little looking around on my HD- and I believe these are all of them:










I hope these are the right photos. I don't organize or name them, so I picked these from memory.

Scary!