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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I have a "Wollensack" cassette deck that has a manual-stick- fast forward?reverse. Anyone know of it? Very few sold. I'm downsizing due to forced retirement and will sell this piece of nostalgia - to a collector.. I've had it since 70's. It played to about 13,000 cps-even though it quoted higher. It also has variable azimuth- a must to strive for high frequency response. I was lucky that Sony service agreed to sell me an azimuth tape-not easy to come by- and I maintained it well and enjoyed it's use til I bought a Dragon with auto azimuth among other features.
Draco tuner.

Fons CQ30 turntable.

Symdex Sigmas.

Amber Tuner.

Kenwood KT 917.

Klyne SH2a.

Nagaoka Kilavolt No. 130

Nagaoka Crystal Stabilizer GL 601

Rowland Research 2080 amplifiers (pair)

Rowland Research Strain Gauge board with Panasonic cartridge

Another strain gauge from Dr. somebody (I'm blanking on his name)

That's all that comes to mind right now. Time for bed.
I recently saw a pair of Symdex speakers in the local Phila area on CL for $50. They could have been the Sigmas, I'm not sure of the exact model as Symdex's are quite rare. I quickly contacted the seller that I wanted them and can pick them up anytime, but alas, they were gone - just not meant to be I guess.
Several months ago I picked up another rarity of a British integrated amp, a Ditton Elan DI-260 made by Celestion. It's a very beefy and transparent sounding 60 wpc line level integrated that sounds great and has very nice build quality. Not much on the net about this one except for some pictures.

Soon I'll be consolidating my bedroom system to have less boxes and will be selling the Ditton, Sumo Charlie tuner and Music Fidelity X-LP phono stage in lieu of a 1 box receiver as the bedroom system is really just background listening anyway.

I have something rare in mind for a 2 channel receiver but let me know what else I should consider in a rare analog or digital receiver (analog preferably)....thanks :)
Macrojack, that would probably be the Win strain gauge cartridge system by Dr. Sao Zaw Win.

Those Draco tuners are rare, but before they had a split they were marketed by Sherwood. I have seen a few of those and I believe that they are fairly common for an esoteric tuner.

Lou, almost by definition receivers are mass market goods and most tend to be made in rather larger quantities than more esoteric components. That said, Setton is a rather rare receiver marque.