It’s like buying a brand-new car from a dealership. After the warranty expires, a small part inside the engine fails. You take it back to the dealer or an authorized service center, and they tell you that because of this one small component, the entire engine has to be replaced. The cost? Half the value of the car.
On top of that, they refuse to provide the part number or even identify the failed component.
To me, that is simply impossible to understand and completely unreasonable.
First, did you actually send your device back to Rose’s distributor and got the quote from them?
Second, the local repair guy… has he ever worked on a HiFi Rose component before?
So the ~400 Euro quote was him shooting from the hip, while Rose gave you a price where you knew it would be fixed.
Now as Bonte pointed out the obvious… the distributor is only going to do a board level swap in the field. They don’t have the time or techs to do anything more than that. If you look at your board, its all SMC (Surface Mounted Components) Cheaper to build… a pain to repair.
The other issue. You see the burned out components. But what caused the components to burn out? Do you know why they failed? Could it have been caused by something else failing first? Another way of asking this… what else failed even though you don’t see any visible indication that it failed?
(Watch enough Mend it Mark videos and you’ll understand why I ask this.)
So the cheapest, safest and cleanest repair is to replace the entire board.
The 150B is 4,500USD on their site. So 1200USD is still cheaper, you get a board and some limited warranty on their work. Buying a comparable replacement?
Mark has already exposed so-called “high end”. Only the people shit and pull the coal out of the pocket. I only feel sorry for the people who spent so much money on alleged “high end” and were so disappointed by fraud. He should have gotten a tube preamplifier from Douk Audio for 119 € for his turntable.
The incident triggered a huge wave of outrage in the hi-fi and electronics community at the end of 2024.
This was a textbook example of the so-called Streisand effect
The luxury device and the repair
Mark got an extremely expensive high-end phono preamplifier from a customer to repair: the “Mastergroove” from Tom Evans Audio Design, which costs between 25,000 and 30,000 euros depending on the version.
When Mark opened the case to fix the error (a defective tantalum condenser), the shock came:
Catastrophic construction: The interior of the 25,000-euro device consisted of several boards stacked on top of each other, which were unprofessionally attached with cheap plastic spacers (nylon).
Critics later compared the superstructure to a “Jenga tower”.
No shielding: The housing was completely made of plastic/acrylic and offered no shielding against electromagnetic interference.
Blurred tracks: The manufacturer had scraped off the names on the standard chips to hide which cheap standard components were actually used.
Simple circuit: Mark analyzed the circuit and found that it was a relatively simple circuit with simple operational amplifiers, which in no way justified the exorbitant price.
The “Censorship Attack” on YouTube
After Mark published the video and it rapidly collected clicks, the developer and company owner Tom Evans reacted extremely aggressively. Instead of facing criticism, he used the YouTube system.
He filed a Copyright Strike against Mark’s video.
The reason was absurd: Since Mark had analyzed and shown the circuit in the video, the manufacturer claimed that this violated his intellectual property (although basic electronic circuits cannot be legally protected by copyright).
YouTube then automatically blocked the video for legal protection.
The reaction of the community
The shot went completely backwards for the manufacturer. Big tech YouTubers (like the repair activist Louis Rossmann) stepped in and made the case public. The deleted video was backed up by fans thousands of times on other platforms and uploaded again.
Mark was not intimidated. He released a new video shortly afterwards, in which he simply recreated the entire repair with props (such as real Jenga stones and drawn boards) to demonstrate the crazy structure of the device, without using the real visual material of the manufacturer.
In the end, the manufacturer stood there as a fraudster, who not only sold overpriced, mechanical mess, but also tried to suppress the truth with false copyright claims.
Mmh…a rascal who thinks evil, if you would possibly draw the reference to Rose. This small component, which can be seen in the pictures, says nothing! As you typed, it is most likely that other components have been affected before the component.
But I stand by my statement that it is a huge waste of material to change the entire board. Of course, companies see it differently and are not allowed to waste money, so the most cost-effective way is to replace entire circuit boards. I see it as a buyer and I get milked again and again, although the device was already expensive enough in the purchase. How typed: It’s my personal opinion.
By the way:
I have all the circuit diagrams from 3400. The only thing they didn’t give me was the source code for RoomPerfect…
The Tom Evans was a bit of a joke and backfired on Evans badly.
The point I was making was that if you watch Mark’s videos there will be times where he had to pull the schematic or make his own schematic to trace a problem back to its root cause which may not be apparent.
And your statement about a huge waste of material would be wrong.
Again… go and try to repair an SMC based system on your own. It can be done, but its not fun. (Well not fun for most… you may be in to it.) Also specialized gear. (Hot plates, magnifying glasses, different tips, hot air guns, etc …)
If you don’t like the idea of SMC based units… you’re going to be limited in what you can buy.
The display they’re planning to replace actually started working again about a week after it initially failed, but then stopped working again about a week later.
I’ve found someone who specializes in board-level electronic repairs and replacing individual components. He’s willing to replace the burned component, but it’s so badly damaged that the part number is no longer readable. There may be additional damage, but this component definitely needs to be replaced.
For those with more electronics experience, the burned part is a three-pin electronic component. If anyone has an idea what it might be or has access to the same board, I’d really appreciate any suggestions.
The best electronics engineer ever, in Germany. Mark is coming from England right away! I like to watch both very much, because Tacheles are spoken and there are no paid YT pussies that Mikey Mouse drives off so extremely.
Jörg’s video about phase-outs, just great, how he chills the hi-fi dealers and the high-end mafia.
Alright “Mickey Mouse”, the bucket is full and enough is enough. I am officially requesting a permanent ban for you, just like you pushed so hard to get Boris banned for speaking the truth.
You are using “Gee Andre” as a cynical weapon to hide a vulgar, low-level personal health attack just because you lack the actual technical expertise to argue like an adult. This forum is becoming a toxic echo chamber because armchair experts like you, who get their pseudo-knowledge purely from YouTube, try to bully real electronics experts off the platform.
You try to dictate your opinion to everyone, but the moment someone exposes your lack of knowledge, you throw a tantrum and resort to disgusting insults. I have reported this to the moderators and expect the exact same consequences for you that you weaponized against others.
Whether Men it Mark, Jörg (VE99 Online) or Repair and coffee…all of them repeatedly come across components that are standard and where the original labeling of the components is made off (unrecognizable) with alleged high-end devices.