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A few weeks ago I attended an event at Elite Audio in San Francisco and while there bumped into Allen Perkins owner of Immedia/Spiral Groove. I mentioned to him that I own an older Immedia RPM-2 tonearm and told him how much I liked it. He said that he still services older product like mine, and for a very reasonable fee would go over the tonearm and make sure that it's operating in top condition. Since my tonearm is close to 20 years old and shows its age in a few minor ways, I decided to pack it up and send it to him. About 10 days after getting the tonearm, Allen emailed me that it was ready and I arranged to pick it up as his office in Berkeley.
The drive up to Berkeley takes about an hour - it was Saturday morning and traffic wasn't too bad. I got there mid-morning and found the Immedia offices were in an industrial part of town that has been gentrified over the years and is now a mix of industrial office and trendy coffee houses and restaurants. Below is a picture of the building. I walked up to the front door and was greeted by what sounded like live drumming. I was impressed, thinking that Allen must have quite the system in his offices. The sound was so loud that my knocking wasn't heard, so I waited for a lull in the sound and then knocked again. This time I was heard and Allen opened the door and welcomed me in. It turns out that it wasn't a great stereo that I heard but instead Allen's drum set. He explained to me that he's an active musician and plays with groups around town 3 days a week. He uses part of his office as a recording studio and has his drums set up there. While waiting for me to arrive, he was just fooling around on the drums.
My tonearm was all packed up and he explained the various things he'd done to it. Among other things he'd replaced some of the rubber decoupling on the counterweight, replaced parts of the antiskate mechanism that were a bit out of wack, tweaked the arm lift so it moved smoothly, and gave me some new tools in case I'd misplaced the ones that came with the tonearm. He also offered me an alignment gauge for the tonearm like the one mentioned here: https://www.audionirvana.org/forum/t...3322#post13322
since he wanted to be sure that I could set things up properly. He has a bunch of these lying around so he just threw this in. He wasn't sure if the first one he found was ideal, so we went on a tour through his entire facility. It's a large loft like space with a big open area, great light, lots of space, and some offices up above. While touring the offices up above he pulled out an old Audiocraft tonearm which he said was the original inspiration for Bob Graham's original tonearm.
The big open area is where SG products are assembled. It was well organized but there were still parts everywhere. There were many, many Centroid tonearms on the shelves ready to go and a few SG turntables in various states of assembly. Allen pointed out a prototype of the new SG Revolution turntable that was ready to go except that he wasn't satisfied with the quality of the work from one of his subcontractors. So he was going to have that part redone until it was up to his standards.
Overall, it was a short visit. I wasn't there for more than 30 minutes. But it was fun to see a small high end manufacturer's operation. It's clear that small companies like Spiral Groove are a labor of love. Allen Perkins really cares about his customers and went out of his way to take care of me despite the fact that I was not spending much money with him. He's someone I'd like to do business with again in the future.
---Gary
The drive up to Berkeley takes about an hour - it was Saturday morning and traffic wasn't too bad. I got there mid-morning and found the Immedia offices were in an industrial part of town that has been gentrified over the years and is now a mix of industrial office and trendy coffee houses and restaurants. Below is a picture of the building. I walked up to the front door and was greeted by what sounded like live drumming. I was impressed, thinking that Allen must have quite the system in his offices. The sound was so loud that my knocking wasn't heard, so I waited for a lull in the sound and then knocked again. This time I was heard and Allen opened the door and welcomed me in. It turns out that it wasn't a great stereo that I heard but instead Allen's drum set. He explained to me that he's an active musician and plays with groups around town 3 days a week. He uses part of his office as a recording studio and has his drums set up there. While waiting for me to arrive, he was just fooling around on the drums.
My tonearm was all packed up and he explained the various things he'd done to it. Among other things he'd replaced some of the rubber decoupling on the counterweight, replaced parts of the antiskate mechanism that were a bit out of wack, tweaked the arm lift so it moved smoothly, and gave me some new tools in case I'd misplaced the ones that came with the tonearm. He also offered me an alignment gauge for the tonearm like the one mentioned here: https://www.audionirvana.org/forum/t...3322#post13322
since he wanted to be sure that I could set things up properly. He has a bunch of these lying around so he just threw this in. He wasn't sure if the first one he found was ideal, so we went on a tour through his entire facility. It's a large loft like space with a big open area, great light, lots of space, and some offices up above. While touring the offices up above he pulled out an old Audiocraft tonearm which he said was the original inspiration for Bob Graham's original tonearm.
The big open area is where SG products are assembled. It was well organized but there were still parts everywhere. There were many, many Centroid tonearms on the shelves ready to go and a few SG turntables in various states of assembly. Allen pointed out a prototype of the new SG Revolution turntable that was ready to go except that he wasn't satisfied with the quality of the work from one of his subcontractors. So he was going to have that part redone until it was up to his standards.
Overall, it was a short visit. I wasn't there for more than 30 minutes. But it was fun to see a small high end manufacturer's operation. It's clear that small companies like Spiral Groove are a labor of love. Allen Perkins really cares about his customers and went out of his way to take care of me despite the fact that I was not spending much money with him. He's someone I'd like to do business with again in the future.
---Gary
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