2. best-of
  3. 179188-162762

What are some of the mistakes, failures or bad purchases of your audio history?

Kind of the opposite of "best of".  I, like most, have made some mistakes or purchases that were poor choices. 

The worst were some speakers "I built".  Anything I owned that was "quadrophonic", Lamp cord for speaker wire, BSR turntables...yes they were in my "poor just home from Vietnam" days...but still.., early Japanese receivers that were not much better than appliances, ...and even though I got into some of the best in later years, some of my beginnings were more bad than humble,...but my taste in food, friends, mates and many other "things" went through what can kindly be called a "learning curve". 
  

jusam
roxy54's avatar
roxy54
7,656 posts
 

Phase Linear 2000 preamplifier and DeHavilland 845 monos, although the guy I bought them from gave me a set of exotic Australian bi-wire speaker cables that are very good, and I still use.

jasonbourne52's avatar
jasonbourne52
2,863 posts
 

Selling my pair of Quad 57's which I had in use from 1981 to 2000. In the last few years I have bought two pairs of the Quads!

sns
3,003 posts
 

Audio Research SP9 Mk.III I purchased late 90's. Expecting much from this pre, AR well respected, so disappointed, low resolution/transparency, really just a bore.

ozzy's avatar
ozzy
7,204 posts
 

Cary SACD player. The sled kept slipping and many of the discs used would show as no disc inserted. Many times, the disc would stay in the player which required taking the top off and manually removing the stuck disc.

I sent it to Cary several times while under warranty. They said they greased the sled, and it did work for a while.

But once out of warranty, they said I needed a new circuit board at a very high cost. No consideration for the fact that it was serviced for the same problem under warranty.

Once returned I ended up selling it along with a Cary SL-05 Dac and swore I would NEVER buy another Cary unit.

ozzy

More to discover