Tag McRubbish

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jimmymcfarrell

Anyone fancy a pint?
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Just wondering if anyone has any experience with Tag McLaren products, because Ive had nothing but trouble from my F3 series integrated amp?
From what I've heard their reliability is more than a bit dodgy! Firstly one of the speaker outputs fell apart, and now they want £223 for a new pre-out board!!! This has turned out to be quite an expensive amplifier, and its less than 18 months old. Just interested to hear if anyone else has had any problems?

Cheers
 
Most of kit is TAG, and so far it's been fine. I've had the PA10 and P60 for over three years.
 
The Tag transport has work none stop for 4 years. The 4.5 years old AV processor need to go back to the factory once as the display start jumping around. All it need was a chip replacement. However, took the chance to upgrade the DAC at the same time. They send it back to me direct without charging for the repair and delivery which was nice.
 
I know of one dealer who thought so much of it they kept the staff loo as a special dem room for it.
 
I did have a problem with my first AV32R (an exceptional product it must be said) but it was fixed under warranty.

To me their AV Processors and DVD Players were exceptional, their amps pretty good but pricey - they then went mental with daft looking £15K speakers and £6K processors and priced themselves out of the market e.g. £2K for the original AV32R was fine and it had little or no competition at that price but when it comes to spending £6K on a processor - well, you buy a Lexicon.

Matt.
 
There was criticism of the robustness of the speaker outputs, but I've enjoyed two (pre-Tag) AudioLab amps (8000a & 8000S), neither of which has gone wonky.

In fact, the 8000S has been quite a remarkable buy, and although it is arguably the weakest part of my set-up its proving difficult to beat on vfm.
 
I think that Jimmy may have had that proverbial 'F for Friday' model! The Tag 60i was a direct descendent of the AudioLab 8000LX; it was the 8000S that begat the EISA-winning Tag 60irv .

There is some lively discussion about the AudioLab -> Tag -> AudioLab cycle over on avforum, complete with Udo. Perhaps you should put this matter of quality assurance to the former boss of TagAudio ...

btw, I'm on the look out for a single 8000mx, having been offered one 8000mx monobloc already - anyone know how I could source one? Otherwise I may just buy it as an AV centre until another orphan turns up ...
 
ditton said:
I think that Jimmy may have had that proverbial 'F for Friday' model!
Click to expand...

just what I thought......typical.....!!!!

may just flog them when I get them back.......

which leaves me with the question - what would be a good amp for driving a pair of IMF transmission lines. was thinking of some valves but dont really know where to throw my money..........
 
FWIW....I've got an AV32R which i've owned for a few years now,with as good reliability as my Krells....i.e.never fails to start.
 
jimmymcfarrell said:
Just wondering if anyone has any experience with Tag McLaren products, because Ive had nothing but trouble from my F3 series integrated amp?
From what I've heard their reliability is more than a bit dodgy! Firstly one of the speaker outputs fell apart, and now they want £223 for a new pre-out board!!! This has turned out to be quite an expensive amplifier, and its less than 18 months old. Just interested to hear if anyone else has had any problems?

Cheers
Click to expand...
Most TM and Audiolab products turn up at my workshop with burnt printed circuit boards and some very obscure faults. I don't think as yet I have ever had one that hadn't burnt out its relay protection to the point where the relay contacts have melted. That either tells us that the output current capability is rather high or that the relays in use are less than ideal. The relay is around a 5amp contact rating and 24 volt coil but I do find that going for something slightly better is a good idea. The input stages are suspect. The 100p has all sorts of issues around the special transistor pair and what I suspect is a DC stability circuit based around the burr Brown 627 precision op-amp. The Audiolab used a TL071 here which is 50x cheaper of course. The 12 volt regulation is usually the first part to go. Zeners with large dropper resistors on very thin PCB tracks is a good way to get a burnt out circuit board with tracks missing and further damage across the circuit. Given that there is plenty of space in many of these amplifiers it seems odd that they wouldn't have fitted a two stage regulator that would have taken the 60 volt supply down to say 28v for a standard 12 volt regulator to then reduced to the level required. This spreads and reduces the local dissipation. I have yet to find any of these to have an output stage, the driver or the output transistors themselves damaged. Indeed from the complex first stage of this power amp most if not all the rest is pretty resilient.
Please be aware that those advising upgrades and specifically to the 8000a and 8000c and the Tag Mcclaren look a likes need to consider the cost and the damage that can result because of it. With little or no idea they do all sorts of things to these amps and charge the cost of a new one to do the work but the special voltage reg boards glued into the things with carbon loaded conductive glue is just plain stupid. Worse is that the boards are charged at a huge mark up for an improvement that can be achieved with a single 30p component!

These amps are all old and the design whilst good at the time is suffering from decay due to the poor layouts of circuit boards. Given that, if you get one that has had little use it might last a while but you need to be aware that much of the damage due to heat is not a straight forward repair should it go wrong!
 
Just in case you need to discover things about the 100p its output stage is based on the Audiolab 8000s the circuit diagram is available unlike the TM one that isn't. The 2sk389 differential pair FET is available via EBay but don't expect this obsolete device to be cheap. I think it is wise to make something with two separate FET's to do the same thing.
All the Audiolab stuff ends up with damaged phono sockets, especially if you use the big heavy cables and connectors that are popular! The sockets are no longer available unless you want to pay for what is called new old stock at prices that make your eyes water! I have seen £60 - 100 a set! I tend to remove them where possible to shuffle those that I can to less used positions and then fit brass gold flashed individual sockets as they are stronger in positions where everyone has a need for a connection, CD and pickup and pre-out usually. It is time consuming but at least you are not paying for poor quality old parts that really should be pennies!
 
Aloha from Tokyo

4 years on so maybe forum closed and/or folks have moved on or out

Wondering what the rep is for the 250x3R 3-channel amp?

Is it reasonably robust & more importantly serviceable still? Parts available, relatively accessible internally etc.?

Cheers

Terry Hart
Hawaii Audio (Honolulu, Hawaii)
S.A.P. Audio (Salerno, Italia)
 

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