Your single most significant purchase mistake?

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. 

Not measuring twice and buying an extra 1.0M worth of interconnects and power cords. It was compounded by the fact that I have mono blocks and two subwoofer amps and they are sited 12 feet from the preamp. That's a lot of extra cables/cords--and they are very fine (and expensive). Ouch. Wish I hadn't done that.

 My ex wife

Martin-Logan Monolith IIIx. Ultimately, my bad. Magnificent speakers that could never integrate into my room. Broke my heart. Sent them to Japan to an eager buyer, who paid the shipping! I got off easy, money-wise.