Have you ever deceived your wife-audio purchase

No way. Wife plays the system too, so it is partly hers. She actually purchased Thiel CS 2s back in 1985 all by herself!!!! And agreed tubes worked well with them and thereby approved the incoming c-j stuff. She was with me on my last four or five amplifier purchases. I TRY to take her to auditions too. She hates that part of the hobby however! But she does REALLY like shaking the walls at high volume when I'm not home!

I don't think Chad thinks it's funny. I don't think it's funny.

Never lie about the stereo stuff. Now, ...the guitars... that's another story.

Marty

In years past I would install new (or new to me gear) when no one would see new gear bring put on the rack. I would be amused that invariably it would takes even as long as a year for my spouse to notice the new piece, by which time I easily said, no, it's not new.

These days I do as I please, in plain sight.

who me????? never...... actually she doesn't care, our (my) rule has always been that I do not use our paychecks to finance my hobbies. I do work on the side, buy and sell stuff and basically wheel and deal to fund my and my son's hobbies. Last year I went to an estate sale and bought a complete house of Audio Design Associates gear and a few pairs of McIntosh speakers.....it took a while to sell everything but I profited $3500. I gave my wife $1000 to spend on herself and bought a brand new conrad-johnson preamp.... it was $1500 plus my trade in....with the remaining $1000 and some money derived from other sales I picked up a pair of Revel M106 speakers...I sold my other speakers and an amp that I was no longer using and bought a new NAD M51 DAC.