for better or for worse on the sound of the mod, i gotta say i'm a little surprised that doug's upgrades don't specifically spell out what he's doing to the box. i guess the ultimate sound of the unit is the most important, but if i was sending someone an expensive piece of gear to be modified, i would want to know exactly what he was doing to it.
he considers everything he does to be proprietary. I think his attitude was, if you trust me to make the thing sound good, send it in; but you'll get no information on the upgrade process. 100% justified imo. If that's not to the liking of the customer, move along or diy.
100% justifiied because of the doug idolatry that goes on...i guess. i just think it's a bit weird that someone would advertise a modification, call it a line stage rebuild, but not tell you how he was changing it. i'm not asking for part numbers or exactly what he does or anything of the sort that would ruin his proprietary information. but telling me which parts are changed, yeah, i'd want to know that. for example, now doug isn't doing mod or repair work on these. you need to get it fixed by someone else, but they have no idea what was done to it in order to fix it? recall your comments about apogee and the ad-1000 schematics.
not sure he does anything that'd make it difficult for someone who knows what they're doing to fix it. for example I doubt it's much of a mystery to Ramsden, Marc Kim, etc....
Doug puts schematics up and he loses business...his perogative to keep it to himself, as it is any prospective purchaser's perogative to get pissed and not have Doug do the work. However, if he doesn't plan to do any mod work in the future, seems that he doesn't need to keep this stuff proprietary any longer.
guess I give him the benefit of the doubt because of his history, reputation, and all he's done for tapers...more than anyone, imo. I can tell you I've been steered in some really fucked up and expensive directions by other retailers, and not Doug.
