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
08-11-14: Tubes108
A side comment, and of course to each their own, I feel any manufacturer that posts frequently is self serving on a subtle to an overt level and takes advantage of an under-the-gun manner to advertise product.
IMO it is incontrovertible that Ralph's many posts over the years have helped a great many people in a great many ways. If in fact his business has derived some benefit from those posts, I see nothing wrong with that. It seems to me to be an example of what is often referred to as a "win-win" situation.

Regards,
-- Al
Damn Ralph, whats going on here?, contact tubes108 and see if his warranty is valid, did you void it?, help the ole guy out, he may not deserve it, call his bluff!
As far as I can figure, he's making it up, its certainly not anything in warranty.

Per my Atmasphere equipment. I was young and naive, assumed there was a common goal to make those purchased-new products work properly. After more than a yr of efforts at repairs I realized my goal differed from others.

Even our first amps and preamps were designed to be easy to service; this was because I worked in a number of consumer electronics repair operations while putting myself through engineering school.

Since we never wired a single amp with stranded wire (unless it was supplied by the customer; before we got our own custom wire made, we had a jig that allowed us to strip a solid core wire from coax cable), I am very confident that Tubes story is 100% made up. He has some form of agenda that has nothing to do with audio. Either that or he has totally confused us with someone else.