What's the deal with Drip Electronics?

[shoetique]

Years ago I made a Pultec EQP-1A clone from Drip. The process was one of the more painful of my DIY career and from what I gather it’s a common one for people who choose to give Drip a try.

First you reach out to Greg at Drip and you get fast customer service. Greg has whatever you need ready and in stock. He’s quick to get an invoice ready and get that sweet PayPal cash. He tells you he is currently working on the build guide and it will be ready REALLY SOON. He even gives you a draft in ‘good faith’.

After this you wait forever for your boards to ship. When you finally get them they look good. Problem is you still have a half assed build guide that’s missing huge chunks of information such as schematics, parts required and entire sections of the build (little things like the power supply section aren’t documented).

When you reach out to Greg he’s dodgy and will tell you he’s working on it. After a while he stops responding to your emails. From here it’s up to you to figure it out yourself. This requires a lot of painstaking comparisons to original schematics and checking traces on the boards. You’ll also need to bother the GroupDIY board who is kind enough to help the unlucky souls who fall into Drip’s honey pot.

So what's the deal with this guy? Has he ever been a part of the DIY community? Did he ever do a good job helping folks get these things built? Has he ever finished a build guide? What's his backstory?

I’d love to learn more about people’s experiences with Drip in the past and present.

Full disclosure - I make YouTube videos and I plan on making one about Drip giving a complete and unbiased overview of their products and business model. I also wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt before making the video so I'm currently working on another one of his builds.

So far it seems he hasn't changed his ways.

 

[pucho812]

I have no answer here but I wanted to say I read that in Jerry seinfeld’s voice.

 

[Ó Draighnáin]

I purchased a Drip board years ago (maybe 12yrs?). Back then the build manuals were available for download and were fine I guess. I populated the board a bit and then lost interest as I realised it wasn't for me (for various reasons). It gathered dust for 10yrs then I gave it away.

I would never personally recommend the Drip approach but I never didn't get a reply because I never asked for anything.

 

[EarthTone]

Situations like yours have prevented me from ever trying a Drip project. I've seen it too many times.

 

[Brian Roth]

I assisted a very close friend after he bought several DRIP boards and all the components to build them. In spite of my decades of experience with electronic design and engineering, every DRIP project was a total hair-pulling experience to complete. Every project required extensive mods (minor and major) to even end up with something that barely functioned.

The "designer" of the boards is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_Lomayesva

I was going to say more, but I'm stopping.

Bri

 

[ruffrecords]

@Brian my experience closely parallels your own. I also helped sort out a friend's DRIP project. I suspect we both have the same opinion of the "designer"

Cheers

Ian

 

[Brian Roth]

@Brian my experience closely parallels your own. I also helped sort out a friend's DRIP project. I suspect we both have the same opinion of the "designer"

Cheers

Ian

From page 1 of the REDD 47 manual. It's "artwork". Maybe with some peyote stimulus?

 

[john12ax7]

Some years ago I questioned why drip pcbs were so expensive. I understand the need to make a profit but this was on the exorbitant side of things. I was told they were of the highest quality and that's what quality pcbs cost.

 

[Brian Roth]

The PCBs were huge in size (for the project at hand), thick fiberglass with heavy traces. I'll stop there.

Bri

 

[sr1200]

I had a similar experience with Drip building a 670 for a friend. My friend was a little more aggressive than I and called Greg incessantly until we got the unit up and running. All the documentation we got was half assed and in pieces across multiple documents. I even offered to do the build docs for the project if he wanted help, but never got a reply. Since we had such a hard time with the build, i started documenting what was missing from the documents and organizing the info that was there. Years later and the 670 is having some issues (it blew the rectifier section, sparks and all) and the unit has sat dormant since, which sucks since its was thousands of dollars to build. My friend reached out to Greg and he DID respond saying he would likely have to replace the main power transformer. I talked my friend into going with the solid state rectifier rather than the tube but he hasn't gotten around to swapping it out. It's a shame though, since i feel that the designs aren't "bad", they are a bit over engineered and specc'd. The boards were THICK. The choice to use silver pads wasn't great on the boards we got as they began to oxidize before we even started the project requiring us to constantly clean the board before a section was worked on.

 

[living sounds]

From page 1 of the REDD 47 manual. It's "artwork". Maybe with some peyote stimulus?

Looks like he's an aspiring 'legal artist' as well...

 

[Rob Flinn]

I have built a couple of his early La2a boards for people. They were pretty simple to get going, but then this was when he was building just a direct copy of the original circuit, no bells & whistles, which is pretty hard to get wrong.

Later I bought an unused Drip Mk11 670 pcb and case from a member here in the black market. I was originally building the 670 point to point, but I had been on it for 10+ years and wanted a way to just get it done. The Drip board was pretty easy to build, the main issue being that he supplied a psu pcb for the 6386 heaters which had no documentation & Drip was not forthcoming with it when I emailed him. Fortunately a member here sent me the documentation & I got it going. The rest of the documentation wasn't the best I have ever seen, but I didn't really have any issues with it.

Would I buy anything else from Drip ......... nah ! I wouldn't have paid full price for the boards, they are too expensive for my budget.

I have the unit finished now, & it seems to work well enough. However, in restrospect I wish I had persevered with my point to point version. I feel a bit ashamed that I had to resort to a paint by numbers box.

 

[Ó Draighnáin]

To elaborate a little on my above post, Drip was highly influential in my DIY vari-mu compressor/limiter journey. I purchased the UA175B board and while I was dealing with its clunky size and trying to follow the trace lines, I thought to myself, bugger this, this is not for me, I'd rather use turret boards and hang the valves and transformers off the back. At least I can follow my own layouts easily. Never looked back.

 

[beatnik]

Nothing new under the sun... This kind of issues have been reported many times in the past.

Drip website is just a gallery of bench photos and half completed projects. No wonder the documentation is not available. Does he ever finish a complete unit himself ?

The projects that were advertised last time I checked an year ago or so where a dual sta-level and dual la-2a. These have now completely disappeared from the website, so I guess it could be problematic to obtain documentation were you buying the boards 2nd hand.

Now that I think about it, Drip website always looked the same, constantly work-in- progress, half completed PCBs.
Nicely presented, so I guess quite attractive for people that are regarding audio gear as fashion objects rather than work tools.
It definitely has an audiophool vibe, plenty of overkill and overpriced components. These work great to attract that kind of fish.

I think Drip business model is exactly what many people report. They get fooled by all the bling bling and then boards sit 10 years in a closet, when they move on and sell them on the next poor sod is gonna realise the boards have no documentation whatsoever. In the meantime Drip release another product and get the next generation of customers ripped off.

With regards to pricing, I think most people in the audio industry are well used to over-priced items, if someone is so stupid to pay hundreds of dollars for a PCB, they kind of deserve to be ripped off.

 

[shoetique]

From page 1 of the REDD 47 manual. It's "artwork". Maybe with some peyote stimulus?

That's WILD that he puts an artwork disclaimer in the build doc!

I had a similar experience with Drip building a 670 for a friend. My friend was a little more aggressive than I and called Greg incessantly until we got the unit up and running. All the documentation we got was half assed and in pieces across multiple documents. I even offered to do the build docs for the project if he wanted help, but never got a reply. Since we had such a hard time with the build, i started documenting what was missing from the documents and organizing the info that was there. Years later and the 670 is having some issues (it blew the rectifier section, sparks and all) and the unit has sat dormant since, which sucks since its was thousands of dollars to build. My friend reached out to Greg and he DID respond saying he would likely have to replace the main power transformer. I talked my friend into going with the solid state rectifier rather than the tube but he hasn't gotten around to swapping it out. It's a shame though, since i feel that the designs aren't "bad", they are a bit over engineered and specc'd. The boards were THICK. The choice to use silver pads wasn't great on the boards we got as they began to oxidize before we even started the project requiring us to constantly clean the board before a section was worked on.

This is the only viable approach with the guy. I scored his phone number from a BBB page. He doesn't like receiving phone calls.

 

[shoetique]

Nothing new under the sun... This kind of issues have been reported many times in the past.

Drip website is just a gallery of bench photos and half completed projects. No wonder the documentation is not available. Does he ever finish a complete unit himself ?

The projects that were advertised last time I checked an year ago or so where a dual sta-level and dual la-2a. These have now completely disappeared from the website, so I guess it could be problematic to obtain documentation were you buying the boards 2nd hand.

Now that I think about it, Drip website always looked the same, constantly work-in- progress, half completed PCBs.
Nicely presented, so I guess quite attractive for people that are regarding audio gear as fashion objects rather than work tools.
It definitely has an audiophool vibe, plenty of overkill and overpriced components. These work great to attract that kind of fish.

I think Drip business model is exactly what many people report. They get fooled by all the bling bling and then boards sit 10 years in a closet, when they move on and sell them on the next poor sod is gonna realise the boards have no documentation whatsoever. In the meantime Drip release another product and get the next generation of customers ripped off.

With regards to pricing, I think most people in the audio industry are well used to over-priced items, if someone is so stupid to pay hundreds of dollars for a PCB, they kind of deserve to be ripped off.

He seems to destroy all his old documentation. I suspect this is to cripple the used market for his work.

You ain't kidding about half completed. The 660 on his website is just a pile on his desk. I doubt he ever got it into a chassis.

 

[offkey_99]

wow! I've been tempted by some of the Drip projects - much less so now. Thanks for unbiased descriptions of your experiences.

 

[shoetique]

Was Drip ever a user on GDIY?

 

[BigPauly]

Wow, I thought I was alone in my experience with my one and only Drip 47 Ultra board. Greg is also not dependable. His best work seems to be photography, since that’s what a big selling point of his work.

 

[AusTex64]

I must have gotten lucky. Before I was confident enought for PTP builds I built two Pultecs and a LA-2A with Drip PCB’s with no Drip issues. I had inductor and interstage transformer issues on the Pultecs which I wrote about here, and fitting the PCB’s to the Collective Cases chassis required a bit of work, but the Drip boards and BOM’s were accurate and worked fine. Greg answered an email about using a choke on the Pultec power supply instead of a power resistor and even sent a little drawing. I would PTP now but for people not confident yet for that like I was, the Drip PCB’s are an option. And I doubt Greg is getting rich selling PCB’s.

That was my experience. YMMV.