As I was sharing all my good experiences with ARC (and there were many of those) I would also like to share for me a very negative and frustrating one. As mentioned above I've been swapping ARC gear for many years and during those years I managed to slowly but surely climb the ladder starting with VSi55, VS110, VS115, Ref75 and LS2b, LS16mk2 and finally Ref6. I have to state that with none of components I ever had a slightest problem, not even a glitch with a tube. And so the story comes to the latest part of my puzzle for which I was dreaming to have all along, starting with older brothers Ref3, Ref5 and Ref5se. I managed to somehow get the famous Ref6 which to me was a dream come true preamp. It sounds great (when it works), looks even better in my book, but the issues with it or with its volume control are just too much for me to comprehend. Namely several months ago one channel stopped working so I took it to service center and it took them almost a month to repair it. By the way, Swiss importer of ARC is a complete joke, so thanks god it landed in hands of the person who was/is servicing ARC gear for decades. Anyhow, he did the job perfectly and while picking up the preamp he showed me (while smiling) the volume pot in this 17k€ unit consisting of 4 DS1808 ICs costing in total 18€(
https://www.maximintegrated.com/en/ds/DS1808.pdf). I was honestly shocked by this fact but was kind of in the mode of being happy as i was able to enjoy my system again. At that time I did not loudly complain to anybody. Few months after (sort of last week) almost the same crap with volume control happened, this time both channels working but left channel being more than 3dB louder than the right one. Again dismantle everything, travel for 400km to leave the unit for service and the guy is in the state of shock. He was like - I honestly can't believe what and how they've implemented as a solution in a unit of this price tag, but this time I'm ordering many more of this ICs and volume control PCBs as I foresee many units coming in my direction in the future. Me, as I am, or actually was, a faithfull ARC fan can also not believe how the ARC can allow this to themselves. This is a complete shame and to me I'm more and more getting a feeling that ARC despite the marketing mambo jambo is turning into a "big" FMCG company. As the funds for this hobby are not falling from the sky I'm more than seriously considering dumping the ARC ship and going somewhere where they treat their customers as human beings not only as numbers on P&L sheet.
So I guess I'll be soon saying Stavros (Aries Cerat) or Thomas Mayer here I come...
Uber frustrated ARC owner...