Convincing your local dealer to let you try speakers at home

Just relating my own experience:

For the most part I have tended to buy speakers second hand to try out, sell them if I don’t like them or tire of them.

However I have had a few in home auditions. One, long ago were Von Schweikert VR 4 Gen 2 speakers, which I ended up buying. The most recent in home audition was actually several years ago: My local Joseph Audio dealer let me do an in home audition of the Perspectives, which had impressed me in the store. I wanted to see if I was willing to pay the very high price for the Perspectives to replace my Thiel 3.7 speakers. If I liked the Perspectives more, I’d sell the Thiels to help buy the Perspectives. The dealer brought them to my home and helped set them up. I remember putting some payment on my credit card as deposit.

In the end I decided that while I loved the Perspectives, they didn’t convince me to get rid of my Thiel 3.7s. I thanked the dealer and told him that, while I had decided to keep my Thiels I also fell for the Perspectives enough that I wanted to buy them as well! Except, now I would have to save up for them. But I would come back to his store for the Perspectives when I could. Well...it look a long time to save for the Perspectives, through some financial ups and downs...years actually. But I finally saved up enough. During that time I passed up better prices on used Perspectives on Agon and other sites. Passed up buying at other dealers.

My dealer had earned my business by allowing me that home audition. So I was happy when I could finally purchase the Perspectives from his shop (he let me have a demo model for a decent price).

So, in the end, both of us were happy.

Also: as I detailed in my long Devore thread, I was also very interested in the Devore O/96 speakers, hearing them at a dealer a few times.  That's a speaker that, if buying new, I'd definitely want to hear in my home as they can be finicky and my room isn't very big.  The dealer offered in home auditions, but I felt I wasn't ready to commit to buying them given the Josephs were on my radar (and I wasn't selling my Thiels).  So I never did that home audition.

@ghdprentice - I too have a bike with a huge wald basket I grocery shop with weekly : ) - And I love track driving and cars too! Just not as much as cycling and listening to music, as I suspect is the same for almost all of us : )

@tomic601 - thanks so much for your kind words 😉

@lalitk - but I did find that the von langa, like almost every other speaker I’ve heard, loses out to the nenuphar over solo piano, nothing comes close to those nens on solo piano 😔 - have you had experience with any other smallish field coil driven speakers that excel with that? 

I've never encountered a dealer that would let me audition stuff at home, but I've been set with my gear for decades now, maybe things have changed.

Decades? Yup. That makes sense

How about this: Tell the dealer your will pay him to come to your home and look at your set up your other components and cables and placement and music you listen to and at what volume. Ask him to recommend a speaker for you.