I can see your going to have a great time at Red Rocks with all of us southern guys
Hehe, touché. I'm actually pretty nice and I'm sure we'll get along.
And I'm not trying to offend or scold anyone here, but I'm definitely not going to hide my feelings on this forum, especially after being asked. We're talking about gear here after all, it's not personal.
My anecdote about the Oade's is certainly the result of a
very poor, completely unacceptable customer service experience. It was intended as sarcasm and was certainly out-of-context, but I'm glad you picked up on it.... This issue was so frustrating because, as you mention, we've all heard great M248 recordings, but very clearly there was something defective with the unit we had. It sounded absolutely nothing the M248 recordings we had heard, the results were barely usable. For the man himself to insist that everything is fine, but not be able to back it up with technical data, was very concerning. The guy literally never hooked it up to a scope or frequency analyzer, just listened to it and said it sounded fine.
Having been around since the early days of the Oade forum, I can certainly say that they have been responsible for a lot of recordings and done great things for the community. But, I'm also someone who builds and tests their own audio equipment and has done tear downs and analysis on damn near every piece of equipment used. Modifying gear is great, but not when you treat is like a secret sauce and refuse to
ever disclose even the smallest of technical details or provide the necessary technical measurements to back up their
scientific marketing claims and high price tags. To me, that's selling snake-oil.
I just can't tell you how bad a customer experience it was... and the resulting price tag. It wasn't cheap in the yard sale, cost money to ship to and from Doug, bench time / labor that Doug charged, and finally the resulting money lost because it had to be sold "as-is" in the yard sale with full disclosure that it was fucked, regardless of what Doug was saying.
That's why I like to support Jon at Naiant and quote him frequently. He's incredibly transparent about his designs and the science behind his products. In the many years he's been supporting the community, he's arguably just as big of an impact, both from the gear he provides and the knowledge he shares. As a rule, he never makes anecdotal claims that can't be backed with technical data and is spot on with his criticism of those that do.
That philosophy is why I'm even bothering to weigh in on this thread. The 4minx is a $5000 piece of equipment that does far more than anyone on this forum will ever need. If you're using it exclusively for concert taping, you're using maybe 5% of its overall features which is fine if you have the money to spend on a cool tool, but not something we should encourage by idolizing two pieces of gear that are dinosaurs in comparison. I don't always agree with what John has to say, but in this case he's spot on. Compare it to the Sonosax or Nagra because that's the appropriate comparison.