I’ve owned a lot of different components from many companies in my life. So obviously they don’t count. Speaker-wise, I’m a Maggie Man through-and-through, but I’ve upgraded up the Maggie line a few times now, so I can’t count them either.
I do have two old friends that I will never sell. A pair of McIntosh C-20 preamps. They’re both about 60 years old. I’ve owned them for almost 50 years. They both have been restored and upgraded twice. The last time by Don Sachs. I’ve had them tested and the specs now exceed the original specs by a nice margin.
My C-20s are in a quadraphonic system. They Each sit just before the front and rear channel amps and are restricted to a line-level input coming into the Aux inputs, and then stright out to the amps.
Basically, I use the C-20s for l-r balancing and volume control of each amp and to get that sweet tube sound they put out. This was in place long before the term “tube buffer” came into vogue.
I still think they are the coolest looking preamps in the world IMHO and as I said, after almost 50 years together - they’re like two old friends.
Tim