Your single most significant purchase mistake?

Back when I was young and dumb(er): A Garrard Zero 100. Junk.

OK, this is interesting. There are 2 products listed here that I've enjoyed immensely.

Someone mentioned a pair of speakers that I just recently acquired as a "mistake".  I've been really enjoying them but found them a bit "bright" when pushed. 

Over and over the comment I've heard made most consistently about them was they "are very revealing of the source" and the source I listen to most is vinyl.  I've been running my phono stage with no loading since I bought it and love the detail and "air" and pretty much everything about it.  I decided to try adding some loading last night, and everything changed for the better.  Did these "bad" speakers suddenly become "good", or was it operator error at worst or lack of properly tuning the entire system at best?

I think I need to still play around with loading settings, but my point is that some gear is more system/room dependent than others.  I have a feeling some of these "mistakes" were more mis-matched components than something inherently "wrong" with the gear itself. 

In most instances I buy things without having ever listened to them and haven't made too many "mistakes", but there have been a couple along the line.  Even those were more listening preferences than there being something inherently "wrong" or "bad" about whatever it was.  One person's "bright and edgy" is another person's "highly resolving and detailed".  Another person's "warm and engaging" is someone else's "boring and subdued".

This is easy for me, the biggest mistake I EVER made was buying the ESCALANTE DESIGN FREMONT Loudspeakers. Nothing else comes close. They retailed at $18,990 and had some positive reviews so bought them unheard. Never sounded good out of the box (4 boxes totaling almost 600 pounds!) and was told they take 250 hrs to break-in. After 500 hrs they were still unlistenable. Sold them for maybe 3k. Biggest waste of time, effort and $$$$$$. Here's a link to a review.

Sorry - but I had two - in a row !!!

Enticed by the alure of tubes I purchased a stunning looking Raysonic SP120 tube amp

It looked fantastic but burned through a set of tubes in 6 months

• it had the wrong transformer installed and overheated the tube heaters
• cost me $300 to get it rectified.

It sounded better afterwards but I was told the output transformers were also poor and it wasn’t worth trying to fix it.

SO I replaced the SP120 with a NAIM 5i integrated amp

• sounded fantastic - much better than the SP120
• But after 10 years the caps gave up the ghost - boom!
• apparently - it’s a feature of NAIM amps
• had that fixed for $450 CDN + 3 weeks down time

Moral of the story

• Never trust a salesperson
• be sure to checkout only quality branded products,
• especially on tube amps.

Now I’m Very Happy with my Bryston solid state amp - 20 year warranty!!!

Nothing against tubes - just my own personal preference

Regards - Steve

sksos,

I remember that company. It was started by an expat from Wilson Audio. I read good things too, they were supposed to be efficient for one thing. They went bell-up pretty fast though. That was a terrible financial loss for you.