Your most disappointing purchase or audition?

Other than reliability/service issues (decomposing surrounds on Zingali speakers and horrible Audible Illusions repair service come to mind) I don't hink that I've ever bought anything that I later really regretted (and I have bought a lot over the years). However, I've definitely heard some clunkers on demo:

I remember hearing the original Martin-Logan Sequel at IIRC Innovative Audio in Brooklyn Heights about a million years ago. That was some really bad integration of a dynamic woofer and a panel. It might have been one of the first pairs manufactured and the underdamped woofers were just a mess. I believe that later examples of that model were much better sounding (there was also a Sequel II at some point that addressed the issue). I also heard a demo of the big B&O room corrected speakers in their Beverly Hills showroom +/- ten years ago that was so bad that I'm still left wondering if one or both of the speakers was defective.

Tubes,

If I've followed this correctly, you purchased your amps new. So I'm curious:

Which dealer did you buy your amps from?

Is it possible that your dealer took back a mint appearing pair of amps that had been unknowingly (or knowingly, I suppose) modified by a customer and subsequently re-sold them to you as new?

The reason that I ask is because someone, somewhere in the timeline is simply not being truthful. Maybe (hopefully?) it was a third party to this thread.

Ralph has a boatload of credibility around here with many folks, including me. I intend in no way to disparage you with these comments (there's absolutely no basis for that, either), but it's hard to reconcile your story with Ralph's response.

From my own experience with an early production SA-1, I can tell you that Atmasphere was straight up with me regarding product limitations and shortfall in expectations. IIRC, there was an early factory mod that Atmasphere implemented to improve the flexibility of mating that model with trickier loads. Ralph extended that offer to me even though the problem was in my loudspeaker matching decision rather than any inherent problem with the product, itself. Your account is so sharply at odds with my own experience with Atmasphere that I'm left scratching my head.

However, if your starting point was different than Ralph expected (because the amps had been modified), I suppose that it's possible the discrepancies in these two narratives could be reconciled. Ralph's repair/installation advice could have been misguided if the circuit that he was working on was different than he thought it was (i.e., modified). That still leaves some potentially imprecise work when the units were returned for repair, but that kind of thing (unfortunately) happens from time to time, even when all involved are well inentioned.

Beyond that, I will say that this is one of the oddest episodes that I've ever encountered in these forums.