Comments about the quality of Pass Labs' products

[peranders]

halojoy commented (somewhere, can't find it) that Fred, Peter etc. can achieve higher quality than Pass Labs. I don't think so ....in the long run.

Our experience is that hand made product gets the worse quality... in the long run.

At first we started with hand placed parts and hand soldered. Then we bought a soldering machine. The quality of solder joints became better but still it happened that parts were placed in the wrong positions (human factor).

Now we use a pick-and-place machine and owen. Our quality now in functioning units is at the top, never been better, but it can get even better. We don't have 100% yield yet but we are getting nearer that goal.

A trimmed production line is far, far better than hand made! It's a misinterpretation that hand made is better by nature. Whitout knowing I am convinced that 100 amps from Pass Labs are better than 100 amps from a single DIY person. Note I have only talked about functioning qaulity and looks.

Nelson, I believe in you

[phase_accurate]

IMHO it is also necessary to have a minimum number of items manufactured, in order to apply quality assurance methods (i.e. feedback from service dept to manufacturing).

OTOH you know the equipment you built by yourself usually very well so you are able to service and improve it by yourself as well.


Regards

Charles

[peranders]

I admit though that "quality" is a wide concept. If a single person build one single unit I think it's rather great possibility to achieve a very well functioning unit but if we involve statistics, it's a different situation.

[Circlotron]

Some companies boast that they have ISO 9001 quality contol procedures therefore their stuff *must* be better. All it realy means is that their stuff is consistently good, bad or ugly. Always.

[peranders]

Originally posted by Circlotron
Some companies boast that they have ISO 9001 quality contol procedures therefore their stuff *must* be better. All it realy means is that their stuff is consistently good, bad or ugly. Always.

You know ISO9000 can be a good thing but it means nothing really, only more paper work and invoices from De Norske Veritas (makes lot's of money in approving companies). The reality makes judgement if you know what I mean?

ISO9000 means that you have control over what you are doing but it says nothing how good you are doing....yoo can even sin when nobody sees you.

[phase_accurate]

I fully agree with you on the ISO stuff. I sometimes think that this has been invented for two reasons:

1.) to generate an opportunity for external consultants to earn (I don't know if this i the correct word ) a lot of money.

2.) to kick small but fine companies out of business.


I nevertheless belive that a serious quality system is a good thing if it is implemented by real professionals and not by a comitee.

Regards


Charles

[MikeW]

Porshe builds AMG motors buy hand. It's about pride and ownership. I wouldn't mind having one.

[joensd]

I agree as well with peranders.
Especially when it comes to doing PCB´s.
Unless you have a professional setup you can´t beat pro-PCB´s.
Thickness of the copper material and the sort are just as important as the different wire gauges you use.
With the design being more complex the layout itself becomes very important as well.
On the other side you can make a simple amplifier like the Zen with properly done point to point wiring and expect great results I believe.

Jens

[wuffwaff]

Per,

before someone says that handbuild items can´t have such a high quality as those rolling from a production line, the first question should be wich quality is ment.
When you talk about mistakes per 100 items or mean time between failures you could be right but normally you only build one (or maybe 2) items.

When one talks about sound quality I don´t think you are right cause a a single person building his own amp can spend as much time and money as he likes cause he doesn´t have to make a living with it.

Most products are the result of a long series of cost cutting to arrive at an optimum cost/perceived value ratio. This doesn´t mean that they sound / drive / look as good as they could.

william

[tiroth]

wuffwaff, you stole my thunder, but I'll still post anyway:

It's an apples-to-oranges comparison.

Certainly hand-made components, even assembled by experts, will not reach the precision of an automated process. However, the desired yield, in most cases, is one. A DIYer can in many cases afford to build the whole thing twice or thrice if that is what is necessary to do a good job. The DIYer is a one-person assembler and QA team-they can continue to reject the product until the quality is acceptable.

Build quality is determined by the builder. It is more expensive to DIY 2oz. copper plate, or teflon PCB, but it is possible, and people do it. Hand-assembly also offers flexibility not available to pick-and place setups. This is true even of PCB-based circuits.