Your most disappointing purchase or audition?

Thanks for your f'back Roxy, however this occurred several years ago & therefore would not be appropriate for that forum, but I take your point.

wow!, welcome back to audiogon Melbguy1, good to see you ole chap, I hope things are better for you now, if you like, you may e-mail me through audiogon and catch up on things, cheers.

Muse 175 monoblocks. A short while after getting them, I noticed a problem--a kind of distortion triggered by a few passages on certain CDs. The problem followed the monoblock when I moved it from one speaker to the other. Sent it back to Muse, and it came back not fixed. Finally sold them on to a store, disclosing the history. Muse seem to have gone under not long thereafter.

Thiel 3.6. First five seconds of music and a tweeter goes up in smoke. Apparently used a "bad" batch of glue in its construction. After many phone calls, got it fixed. But I soon let it go--just too cold and analytical, and early digital DGG recordings sounded dreadful on it.

Threshold pre-amp; forget the model, but expensive, late model (shortly before the company closed; hmmm, is there a pattern here?). Remote volume control stopped working weeks after purchase.

Mel,
I take your point as well...those incidents are frustrating and can stay with you for a long while. It has happened to me as well.

Two amplifiers.

VAC PA 100/100 and Sonic Frontiers Power 2. Couldn't get rid of them fast enough.

Speakers.

Wilson Sophias. I really wanted to like these and they did some things well. But the midrange was too smooth and unnatural sounding. Moved them out pretty quickly.

Coincident Super Eclipse and Aerial 7B. Just too boring and mid-fi sounding. Not terrible, just so-so. Sold both of them again in less than a week.

Shakey