Your most disappointing purchase or audition?


I've had a few.

bought a Naim Nait 3. Loved it in the store. Returned it within a week- way forward at home

Brought home some CJ preamp to audition perhaps 22 years ago. Noisy as anything and a turn off transient destroyed a tweeter (though years later i bought a CJ 17LS2 which I thought was the finest preamp I ever heard in my home)

Auditioned a VPI table (HW19) in a store- the store just could not get the belt to stay on. Bought a Rega instead. This was in perhaps 1990.

Fortunately, I never really experienced buyers remorse say 6 months or more after settling on a piece of gear.

Finally, there have been too many speakers that got stellar write ups which I just didn't care for.
128x128zavato
@jafox  Yes.  Me too.  Thiel 3.6.  Made the mistake of availing myself of the trade-up program from a 2.3? 2.4?  The 2.X were OK, the 3.6 proved, over the medium, nigh on unlistenable.  Local dealer finally rescued me with ProAc Response 2.5's.

johnto,

It sounded thin and very "old school solid state" on 4 pairs of speakers that I owned at the time. I was later told that it would have sounded better if I had run it in balanced mode, but geez...

It sure looked pretty though.

zavato,

I sold my Mac MC 300 to get it because there was so much hype at the time, and I felt so bad within 1 night. The member who sold it to me bought Mac 402 monos to replace it, and admitted to me on the phone that they sounded much better, and that he never really liked the Pass.