The only thing I can agree with the owner of this brand is that the competition on the high end hifi market is very tough.
It means that your product must be attractive on every criteria, including the sound.
Every time I heard Dartzeel hifi, it was ok, but nothing great. The last time was the worst. It was a very expensive integrated amplifier, driving TAD loudspeakers…I said to the dealer I was hearing a flat and boring sound…He said, I will replace the Dartzeel with a Krell integrated (80% cheaper)…The sound was way better…So, before complaining on the market, that is the customers, the guy should look at himself…Having said that, it is always sad when someone faces problems when doing its best to deliver products, it is his life and passion, I do hope he will recover and be profitable with his new products.
So he’s saying that high end prices are going up and up so that manufacturers (or dealers?) can offer ever higher discounts to buyers? That’s bizarro.
R2R is an interesting situation. Surely there can’t be that many albums available on R2R, and likely zero of the kind of music I listen to. But admire the components for their industrial design!
@ChrisK TAD speakers are fairly hard to drive and not the best match with Dartzeel…
Dartzeel tends to work better with easier to drive speakers. With speakers that are a good match with Dartzeel, the Dartzeel sound is anything but flat and uninvolving.
Thanks @T38.45. Good to hear it straight from the horse´s mouth after the alarmist post on WBF by Roy Gregory the other day. I certainly have no intention of selling my darTZeel amp. It’s a match made in heaven with my Serblin Ktêmas, and while there are other amps out there I have heard that do pretty much as good a job (the Piliums for example) they would be sidegrades and definitely not upgrades. So I’m standing pat, and waiting with interest for Hervé to make his next move.
Clearly from Hervé’s press release Dartzeel is not out of business but is changing its business strategy. I am looking forward to the forthcoming “new concepts”.
Not an uncommon situation I believe, among the high-end Manufacturers. They’re at the mercy of their dealer network.
IME there are mainly two types of dealers in the high-end audio market; those looking for steep discounts from manufacturers in order to lower retail prices and increase their sales volumes, and those looking for steep discounts from manufacturers to increase their margins.
In both cases, the manufacturer gets the short end of the stick. So dealer management is often a huge ongoing challenge.
Betteridge’s law of headlines (and post titles) 
I know it was a sample size of one (me) in one respect, but in another it was a sample size of absolutely everything I could get my ears around when I went amplifier shopping. Nothing was close to darTZeel for me.
Coincidentally, I went through a very similar scenario with my Tenor Amps. Soon after I acquired their original 75 OTLs, Tenor went Bankrupt!
I took a Solid-state “detour” (Boulder Amps) for a couple of years, but eventually came back to Tenor who were still in business but completely bespoke; Amps exclusively made to order only.
I’ve been with Tenor again now for about 8 years, and just last month upgraded my Amp to their new 20th Anniversary Limited Edition
My guess is he got tired of dealers discounting his products and thereby devaluing them heavily when they came up on the second hand market. This also tends to lead to grey markets forming when one region has much cheaper prices than others. None of it is good for the brand.
Making his amps made to order, and presumably sold directly to consumers gives him full price control and removes all the above problems. Of course his sales volumes will likely also fall, but I guess that is to be made up by the new, cheaper product line.
The luxury watch market went through exactly this cycle a few years ago, with many brands killing all their ADs and moving to a boutique model for the same reasons.
Personally, I think it’s bad when an ambitious manufacturer who has a vision, is passionate and puts his heart and soul into detail has to give up.
So do I. Fortunately he hasn’t given up, just altered his business strategy to meet changed circumstances. Reminds me of when my boss asked me what the basic function of a company is. I ventured ; Make a profit? No, survive.
For CHF 16k. Gimme a break.
Nobody said it was easy
No one ever said it would be this hard…
(after Coldplay 
)
Really? I can remember back many Revox generations to the 1970s and the A77 was pretty expensive then. Replaced by B77 that was even more costly. The current competitor to the new B77 Mk.III is the Ballfinger machine which is $28,700. US price is $16k for the Revox which seems not extortionate in 2024 for a new high end machine with its predecessors’ reputation and having a production capacity of only 20 machines per month.
Apologies as this is somewhat OT.
/me reaches for the big red “Ban” button…
I was ref. to the Revox R2R 16k CHF (!) price tag- not the Dartzeel thread here!
I own an CTH-8550 MK2 and it sounds amazing with my Alexia 2.
Pretty expensive is subjective. These were the official list prices for the standard versions:
Pricelist 01.09.1976 A77 CHF 1’950
Pricelist 01.09.1977 A77 CHF 1’880
Pricelist 01.09.1978 A77 CHF 1’660
B77 CHF 1’880
Pricelist 01.09.1979 A77 CHF 1’760
B77 CHF 1’980
Pricelist 01.07.1981 B77 Mk II CHF 2’300
Pricelist 01.05.1983 B77 Mk II CHF 2’300
Pricelist 01.09.1987 B77 Mk II CHF 2’775
IMHO 16k for a B77 Mk III is highly exaggerated; and even more so for the Ballfinger.
And in contrast to the professional (high-end) Studer machines the Revox machines have always been considered as (non professional) amateur machines by the manufacturer himself.