The Best & Rarest of all Stereo Gear


When it comes to stereo gear, to me, besides sound and build quality/reliability, the next thing I look for is how rare it is. There is just something about very rare, one-off, stereo gear that makes it very enticing to find and acquire. Over the years, I've been lucky enough to have found some rare gear and there's still others items that I'd like to find.

Recently, in my local CL, there was a very rare pair of Symdex speakers available for $50 that retailed at over $2200. When I inquired about them, they were gone. There is very little on the net about these speakers and later was lucky enough to have found a pair of Paisley Research AE-500 speakers. The Paisleys are amazing & are really giving my Omega Grande 8's a run for their money.

How about the Wingate 2000a amp? In 30 years, I've never seen one of these beauties for sale. Does anyone remember the EJ Jordan shoe box sized amp and preamp?

Please share if you are fortunate enough to have owned any ultra rare gear or if you are looking to acquire something unusual. (I'll share my own list of rare acquisitions and wants in a follow up post. I didn't want to make this initial post too lengthy).

Look forward to hearing your responses, thanks for reading,
Lou

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Showing 2 responses by bdp24

I had a pair of Braun made version of the old Quad ESL, only pair I’ve ever seen. Peter Walker allowed Braun to make them for the German market only. I sold them to Brooks Berdan---he wanted them for his Hi-Fi museum.
The Fulton J’s! I bought a pair from John Garland in ’74, which replaced Tympani I’s in my system. Another rare and excellent speaker is the ESS Super Quad. It consisted of the original Quad ESL for midrange, a transmission line-loaded KEF B139 woofer for bass, and RTR ESL tweeters. Similar in concept to the Levinson HDQ (another rare one), which had two Quads per speaker, a Hartley 24" woofer, and Decca ribbon tweeter. I think the Super Quad was priced around $2,000, same as it’s main competition, the Infinity Servo-Static IA. The Super Quad evolved from ESS’ Transtatic I (of which I have a pair), which had the same TL KEF woofer and RTR tweeters, but with a KEF 5" Bextrene midrange driver. That speaker was priced at $1200.