What are/were the best sounding cheap components you have ever had?

"Cheap" is a relative term.

What I now see as cheap I probably didn’t then. I am sure that many here would consider the stuff I now see in my system as higher dollar to be "cheap."

But the first pair of 2 way speakers I bought back in ’93 or ’94 were NHTs for probably $300 & change from Crutchfield, and I thought that they sounded quite nice, up until the time I bought a pair of B&Ws.

Later on in the mid 90s I bought a Muse Model 2 Dac for around $1500 which I thought had a significant positive effect on my system.

A few years after that, the CD player I was using for a transport started doing goofy things on occasion, so I boughtt a Rega Jupiter for under 1k that I thought was a good value & performer.

My first tube amp (in ’94) was a Cary SLA 70, and I seem to remember it being around 1500. I still have it & fell back on it while I was working on my bigger tube amp and I still like the sound.

In ’99 I bought a second hand Cary SLP90 for 1k and I absolutely loved that preamp.

I can't remember exactly what they cost, but my NOLA Boxer speakers have essentially taken me out of the speaker market for a modest fee.

I only buy cheap. Just got a new 5 year warranteed SVS Micro delivered (Sunday), FedEx for $766 including 7% sales tax.

It's pretty good with the app on an old phone.

I dislike the word cheap, inexpensive works best for me. Purchased a mint Technics SL-P500 CD player(1986) for the price of a pizza at a thrift store several years ago

Early on, Acoustic Research had good speakers but not particularly cheap for the time.  But they did offer some bargain stuff --

AR Turntable  (Legendary bargain,)

AR Amp  (Good value back then.  Still have mine.)

AR Tuner  (Another decent value.  Still have mine.)