What are/were the best sounding cheap components you have ever had?
It is easy to like the best of the best, so to say. However it is always satifying and memorable when an inexpensive product turns out to be very good to great.
Some that come to mind from personal experience"
Large Advents (original)
Early Nakamichi SR receivers
Original Monster interconnects and speaker wire
Pioneer Pl-12 turntable
Shure M-95
Early Stax and Audio Technica headphones
MoFi "special" pressings
Magnum Dynalab Etude. Yes some were better, but a real value
The Absolute Sound mag in the beginning
Early Conrad-Johnson and Audio Research tube electronics
Early Classe integrated amps.
The original Sony Trinitrons
And there are others....but part of this hobby is enjoying the journey.
Have you had cost effective items that were successful for your enjoyment?
My Quicksilver Mono Amps were reasonably inexpensive and offered up luscious tone and imaging. The thing is, its all-important 8417 power tubes eventually became scarce and costly. Worse, the tubes didn't hold their tone past about six months. The tubes were also prone to failure, especially if the pairs weren't truly matched. Even when they were assiduously matched I could never quite trust them. |
jrosemd,
I had the same CDP back then. Wow, I could skip tracks, pause, even program the play. The convenience was a big step from a TT. |
