Full disclosure:
1.) I am a member of the trade (I own www.sonicweld.com)
2.) Lee Weiland has been a very close personal friend, business advisor, and confidant of mine for nearly twenty years
3.) Lee promotes and sells Sonicweld products
I have been following this thread with a growing sense of frustration. I had not intended to contribute to it, but was provoked to do so by inflammatory statements like these from Parrots:
“I belive he knew exactly what this wire was made of and did not want anyone testing it and it becoming public...”
“I belive every single V1 cable out there is not pure silver and this was known by Lee at cryo parts before he offered it for sale...”
“I belive this is because he knows what those results would show which is why he never had them tested”
It is one thing to express one’s opinion, good or bad, of a product or a business; ostensibly, such exchange of ideas is what forums like Head-Fi are for. I respect the right of anyone here to express such opinions. To me, it is quite another matter to posit such unfounded, hurtful conjectures about someone’s business practices, motives, and character - words which are indelibly and publicly recorded, and which are able to prick afresh new minds and visitors for years to come, should they stand unchallenged. I find these statements particularly offensive because they suggest a callous, calculating deceptiveness which I know to be diametrically opposed to Lee’s personality, ethics, and business practices.
I fully realize, given my disclosures above, that some of you may dismiss my defending of Lee as predictable, self-serving, and disingenuous. Be that as it may, but I think I’m about as well qualified as anyone on the planet to comment on Lee’s nature. I have never known Lee to engage in deliberate deception or to treat a customer unfairly; to the contrary, he has long been an example to me of professionalism and fair-mindedness. I’ve seen him bend over backwards for his customers on occasions too numerous to recall, often taking a financial loss in the process. I have high standards for those who represent my products, and if I ever felt that Lee was engaged in deceptive or dishonest business practices he wouldn’t be selling them, our long friendship notwithstanding. I haven’t had the pleasure of knowing Craig at Whiplash Audio for nearly as long as I have Lee, but he also sells my products, and I have no reason to believe that Craig is a person of any less integrity than Lee.
I’d like to close with some observations about some of the key issues in this thread. Any manufacturer in this industry necessarily relies on suppliers (often hundreds of them) for parts and materials. No one grows their own silicon ingots, and no one refines their own silver ore. As raw materials acquire more value by progressing through the transforming processes of the supply and manufacturing chain, there is an implicit trust between vendors that makes the whole mechanism work. Sometimes that trust is augmented by formal standards-based certifications like ISO9000 and the like, but ultimately each order placed is still a leap of faith for any manufacturer. Provided that proper diligence has been done in qualifying a supplier, it is the exception to suffer a delivery of sub-par or misrepresented goods, but it does happen on occasion, and this sort of thing could have happened to any manufacturer. It has certainly happened to me many times; I’ve just been through the maddening experience of receiving three sequential bad batches of very expensive circuit boards from a trusted vendor I’ve done business with for more than a decade. Whether or not such incidents constitute duplicity on the part of the supplier, debacles like this represent many thousands of dollars of losses that simply have to absorbed as a cost of doing business. No reputable manufacturer wants to allow bad parts or materials into their product because they create big headaches, frustrated customers, and financial losses. When that does happen unintentionally, the difference between a good and bad business is how such problems are handled. Craig and Lee are offering to replace the product in question courteously and promptly, and at their expense. What’s more, Lee has shown a level of transparency and accountability about his wire that is unprecedented in my experience; I’ve never seen another wire manufacturer disclose independent material assay results. It is difficult to imagine that more could be reasonably expected of Lee and Craig, yet a witch hunt sort of atmosphere persists in this thread.
I realize that business practices in today’s world of seemingly endless frauds and scandals invite a certain degree of deserved cynicism (mostly on the part of large corporations), but I find it disheartening that many forum philosophers or self-styled experts are so quick to assume that by default, small high-end audio manufacturers are collectively unscrupulous, willing and anxious to scam their customers at any opportunity, laughing all the way to the bank as they pocket their “hundreds of thousands” of ill-gotten profits. Yes, I can affirm from my own sad experience that there are a few bad eggs in this business, but I would aver that the majority of the people in our audio world are very hard-working, honest, and chose to operate in this sphere because they love the industry, the avocation it serves, and the satisfaction of sharing musical joy with their customers. Lee and Craig are great examples of the latter type, and I stand by them and their reputations publicly.
Josh Heiner
Sonicweld
