We also need to be able to purchase the parts we need in a timely fashion without dealing with a bunch of delays.
If we take the 100K pot for example, our normal vendors typically run out of the 100K RK-27 Alps pot before reordering, and there is a 4-6 week gap between when they have 0 available and when they get in the next batch of 1000. This is typically unacceptable to our customers to add 4-6 weeks to our normal 3-6 week delivery time.
In addition, the RK-27 is being discontinued, so if we had elected to use this part in any of our manuals, we would need to reshoot all those manuals and edit the instructions for the new part.
This is not an issue that we would expect to run into with the current 100K pots that we use.
As far as caps go, I would encourage folks to educate themselves a lot more on what is standard practice in high end audio. There are plenty of $5000+ components on the market that are LOADED with electrolytic caps and even *gasp* tantalum caps in the signal path, and these components receive rave reviews and significant praise. Just because a cap is polarized doesn't mean that it isn't intended for use in the signal path of an amplifier.
If we take the 100K pot for example, our normal vendors typically run out of the 100K RK-27 Alps pot before reordering, and there is a 4-6 week gap between when they have 0 available and when they get in the next batch of 1000. This is typically unacceptable to our customers to add 4-6 weeks to our normal 3-6 week delivery time.
In addition, the RK-27 is being discontinued, so if we had elected to use this part in any of our manuals, we would need to reshoot all those manuals and edit the instructions for the new part.
This is not an issue that we would expect to run into with the current 100K pots that we use.
As far as caps go, I would encourage folks to educate themselves a lot more on what is standard practice in high end audio. There are plenty of $5000+ components on the market that are LOADED with electrolytic caps and even *gasp* tantalum caps in the signal path, and these components receive rave reviews and significant praise. Just because a cap is polarized doesn't mean that it isn't intended for use in the signal path of an amplifier.