"The Upgrade Company" WTF?!

Dave B.

Well-Known Member
Apologies if this has been discussed before here. I searched for my title words and found nothing.

I was doing a Mac search and stumbled across this:

https://upgradecompany.com/brands/u...t/366-xrt1k-floor-standing-loudspeaker-system

Here's the text beneath some pictures of (alleged) Mac wiring:

Actual current production McIntosh internal power cord wires: super thin 28g crappy fast-on connectors HIDDEN below shiny black covering

Close up of actual McIntosh power amplifier wiring. Bad knife-edge type connection, very thin cheap wiring

McIntosh wiring is all unshielded allowing it to collect hundreds of thousands of RF pulses every second which get reproduced by amps preamps sources. This is why stock gear sounds awful in comparison.

Then there's a pitch for their "ULTRA HIGH PERFORMANCE Signature Edition upgraded versions which include our $1499 McIntosh Signature Edition Upgrades & our RFI EMI RIDDANCE TECHNOLOGY, high end parts & wiring, complete with our 5 year parts & labor warranty."

Followed by this:

"Discover how McIntosh products can really sound!!
NO BRAND BEATS OUR SE UPGRADED McINTOSH PERIOD!!! WE WOULD NOT BE LETTING YOU PLAY WITH IT FOR 30 DAYS AND BUY IT BACK OTHERWISE - BE PREPARED TO BE FLAT OUT AMAZED - CALL US NOW FOR for package discount pricing! 231-242-0946.
Find out what you've been missing with stock "For Profit Built" factory mass produced internally naked RFI EMI CONTAMINATED McIntosh equipment!"

As I said in my thread title: WTF?!

I assume that Mac Labs knows about this company referring to their products with words such as "crappy," "cheap," and sounding "awful." This is rather libelous, IMO.

I was just amazed to read this. Anyone else here ever see this or had contact with these folks?

Dave
 
Ya wanna know how you can tell your Mac is going bad?
When it starts buckling it's Knickerbockers *below* the knee, hanging around pool parlours in a pinchback suit, smoking tailor-mades, memorizing jokes from Captain Billy's Whiz-Bang, and using expressions like "swell", and "so's your old man".
Ya got trouble, right here in River City.

Create a nonexistent problem and offer a solution, for a nominal fee.
 
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From the website:

"Page information last updated: 20/04/2017
Disclaimer: We believe but do not guarantee that the information on this website is correct at the time of publication."


What a buffoon!
 
If you actually read some of the explanations that he offers, his business is centered around providing increased immunity to RFI. Personally, I've never done any experiments in regards to the effects RFI may or may not have on analog audio signals.

According to his website, he holds 6 US Patents. Last I checked, the US Patent office doesn't hand those out unless they're deserved.

I personally have zero first hand experience in his field of expertise so I'm not qualified to disparage his claims. We did have one AKer that bought a used C500 with his upgrades and he gushed about its SQ but as he bought it upgraded, he had no baseline to compare the AFTER results to.
 
There are things I like and dislike about various generations of Mac that I've seen, I suppose almost any commercial product could be upgraded if one wanted to make the additional effort to and past the point of rapidly diminishing returns.
 
I guess its like anything else in the world. Nothing is perfect and there is always room for improvements in some ones eye's. Mcintosh has never been the leader in perfection, their claim has always been to build and deliver a product using proven engineering principals and execution in construction to reach a certain standard, which they specify to surpass by quite a sufficient margin. If those standards aren't high enough you have the freedom go buy your choices from someone such as Boulder, or Threshold, Bryston, etc etc etc. I've always felt that Mac gives the best proven long term performance for the dollar spent. You are free to spend more. or less. They are a proven company that manufacturers great products. Are they absolutely the best in every aspect I suppose not. I am sure performance could be improved here and there but at what cost. People are crying about $12,000 dollar amps and $6000 dollar pre amps. Thats a lot of money but for many times those prices you could gain some in performance and probably even more in execution and quality of fit and finish. But is that why we by Mac? No its because they build great equipment, that is proven to last many years giving dependable great sound reproduction for the amount of money spent. This is further proven by the integrated units they build for those of us who are more on a budget, have space limitations and don't require massive amounts of power. I can see where folks might want better power cords on generation 1 and 2 mac power amps and pre-amps. I always thought my 240's and 275 could be improved in that way. But the circuit topology of both amps made them more efficient than most tube amps and there fore to meet their specs larger power cords were not required. The panloc system was a great idea, but needed constant maintenance to function over a long trouble free period. Volume controls and switches on early pre-amps were all a compromise needing constant service and cleaning. The early big amps with fans were noisy, smaller amps used in confined spaces needed additional cooling. All of these issues were corrected over the years, but at the time these choices of performance versus cost made sense. Its only been since the 70's that customers with more money than sense have demanded pushing the envelope to the extreme claiming to hear and measure deficiencies that others would find very suspect driving up prices making the units unavailable to those who would value them and use them the most.

Example: we had a customer who had a friend with old HP test equipment and he offered to measure this friends 2105. When the customer came into the store demanding his money back because the unit didn't meet specs. The VP of sales and I went out to check and observe a round of testing . Yes indeed the measurements confirmed some thing wasn't meeting specs. It was the audio oscillator that had the 1 to 2 % distortion. Another time I saw one of my 275's fail at a Marantz clinic it turned out to be the input coupling capacitor, the value of which I have for gotten. We replaced the cap at our shop and the unit was retested and proven to be the best tube unit measured during the clinic. An old C-22 looked pretty miserable against a new Marantz model 7T, but I made them check a Model 7C I brought with me and it was worse. And when I brought in a new never seen C-28 the next day it out performed the 7T by a wide margin. Th guys from Marantz exspected me to bring in a C-26 which was a close match to the 7T but the C-28 was a clear winner. So I am very skeptical about what others say and where they place their emphasis for criticism. Sure I might buy a tube pre-amp, but it will have to posses graphic tone controls a ,record selector, and a 7 position mode switch. We all have our dreams, but lets be realistic as what we really need to spend to obtain long term proven musical reproduction in our homes or offices. Mcintosh.
 
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1: If it's inside the metal case, it's shielded.

2: RF not being in nor near the audio frequencies, should not affect audio.

3: McIntosh engineered, prototyped, tested, improved, tested, and produced high-quality products that met (beat) their spec. Although you can always create improvements on paper, they don't always improve the product and without complete understanding of the original design and extensive testing you risk creating unintended results that can degrade the product.

4: I have patents, have written patents, it was a big part of my career and what I did. If I have a patent on a mailbox post breakaway or window-blind design it doesn't make me an expert on audio (especially someone else's design).

5: What they ^^ said.
 
I talked to these people once about doing a mod to my Emotive gear that I had. Lots of mumbo jumbo and big claims about how much better it would be. When I tried to nail them down about what they did and how it would improve things, I still got the mumbo jumbo talk. When I told them I felt it would not be worth it to do, got a very subtle insult. Now I'm not against upgrades to stuff, just tell me exactly what you will do, how it will improve the sound based on what you do, and then follow it up with the manufacturer saying they will still honor the warranty on the product. If ALL of that is there, you are probably OK.
 
Google is your friend.

https://www.stereophile.com/content/upgrade-company-client-trapsad-ongoing-story-help-welcomed

https://forums.audioholics.com/foru...reatened-audioholics-with-legal-action.64827/

https://forums.audioholics.com/forums/threads/the-upgrade-company-is-a-sham.61665/

http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showthread.php?2845-The-Upgrade-Company&highlight=upgrade+company

http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/the-upgrade-company-upgraded-equipment.164757/page-2

and a google search: https://www.google.com/search?q=The...rome..69i57.5335j0j8&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

Also, I searched David J. Schulte and David Schulte in the USPTO database as asignee and applicant and turned up no issued patents, ... so I don't know what (or if) was patented in his name.

If the BBB is to be believed, he has one "review" on the BBB site and it is positive, so one review being positive gives him an A+ rating. Apparently nobody else has bothered to review him nor complain to the BBB.

My opinion? I put this guy on my run away list with another "restorer" over in Wisconsin.
 
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