Reliability - what’s your experience been?

Had to replace a motor on a Nottingham Spacedeck

Bad output transformer on a Music Reference RM9. Luckily Roger had a spare even though the amp was out of production 

Bad output transformer on a Canary CA-160. These were monoblocks and the cost to repair was more than their value. I sold the pair back to Canary. Was not impressed with their customer service

Blown tweeter on a Silverline Sonata. Replaced with no drama

Bass driver went out on a Von Schweikert VR4. Albert sent one out promptly and a UPS label for the bad driver. Great customer service, RIP Albert 

The highest reliability electronics tend to come out of the island nation called Japan....which is what i tend to stick with. If i buy stuff that gets into the high end price bracket, i play it safe with such Japanese things.

I buy some cheaper American products like Schiit Audio and other Chifi things. If it fell apart, well...it didn’t cost that much (to begin with).

European stuff...nope, pass bro...i don’t feel like shipping transatlantic just to get your "high end" unreliable crap fixed...not to mention your miserable customer service!

Ok, maybe some German made stuff is an exception, the German engrs seemed to have learned a thing or two about design for reliability...

(Many lessons learned the hard way over the years...)

Whoa. If you think I’m going to jinx my stellar record by responding…

😉

Happy listening. 

I had a Classe’ CAP150 which went back and forth to Quebec and the US 3 times for cold solder joints.  I sold it, as is.  The other was Yaquin hybrid integrated amp which caught fire a couple of hours after first turning it on for the very first time.  Good thing I was in the house as black acrid smoke started filling my upstairs office/listening room. I managed to get all 6 windows open after I yanked the power cord and put 2 fans in the windows, one blowing out and one blowing in.  Luckily, the smoke wasn’t in the room more than maybe 3 minutes to do any smoke damage.  I sent pictures to Yaquin in China but they wanted the amp back before giving me a partial refund.   I tossed it in the trash instead as the cost to ship was half the price of the amp.  Of course, the company said I must have hooked it up wrong.   This amp was bought direct from China for around $190.00 plus the shipping.  It was poorly made with wires just wired haphazardly and lots of sharp metal inside that could easily snag a wire.  That was my first and last time I bought from China.  This was around 2004-06 time frame and the company was pretty much unknown. 

In 50 years I've never had an equipment failure, other than a laser reader go on a DVD player.  But, in the past few years, I've had 3 pieces of high end equipment have issues right out of the box.  All three were replaced but it was a nuisance.  Read into that what you will.