Your Worst Audio Breakdown

My worst experience relates to a Sonic Frontiers Power 2 amp that developed a hum in the left channel. I contacted Chris Johnson who was very helpful in guiding me to isolate the problem as a bad selector switch on the back side of the amp for the left channel. I did not want to ship the one hundred pound beast to Canada and back for what I thought was a simple switch replacement. Chris provided me the part number for the switch so I ordered a pair from Mouser. A techie friend stepped up and did the repair and replaced both switches. Turns out the repair was a major undertaking which led to 7 hours of bench time.... unsoldered circuit board..... so forth. This repair was more complex than it needed to be for a simple selector switch. I sold the amp and never looked back.

My TEAC X-10 R2R, the play function stopped working. After 30 years of great fun. And of course just after I tuned down a decent offer of sale, my affection for it would not let it go. Had a amp go once, just started to smoke. And two dvd and cd recorders. Small potatoes compared too the R2R.

There was a poster once who stated he would upgrade his gear every five years, pending ones money for toys, not a bad idea. Accept if you have a few statement pieces.

I haven't had any big issues with my gear, Levinson, Ayre, Audio Research, anything that did go down got fixed promptly, and my dealer always lent me something interesting.
A friend had a tube mono amp go up in flames once, it almost took his house with it, luckily he was in the room with a large glass of beer in his hand.

My worst piece of equipment was a Sonic Frontiers CD Transport. Though I bought it new with a five year warranty, Sonic Frontiers was never able to make it play most CD's.
I sent it to Canada 2 times at my shipping expense only to get it back exactly the same way. Sonic Frontiers said I had faulty redbook CD's !!!
Anyway, after airing this dirty laundry on the internet, thier were many protests on my behalf. Chris Johnson finally gave in and gave me a full refund. I still have copies of those postings in case Chris wants to chime in.

I ended up selling my Sonic Frontiers Dac soon after. I wanted no part of that company and Chris Johnson.

Over the last 25+ year I've had many failures. The worst was smelling, then seeing smoke coming up from my Krell amp. I had purchased it used from a store in Chicago. I call Krell they asked a few questions and then they give me an RA number. I waited at few weeks, called and asked what it would cost and when it would be ready. The nice lady said, it shipped two days ago and no charge. I'll always remember the smell. These days I always buy from well respected companies.