What are your

What pieces of gear are your “keepers”? I’m talking about the pieces that, while others have come and gone, you’ve held onto for years. It’s the piece that you’ve thought about selling a dozen times but never could bring yourself to part with. Maybe you’ve even posted a For Sale ad on Audiogon but then come to your senses and rushed back to the computer to cancel the ad. Or maybe in a moment of weakness you did in fact did sell it, only to kick yourself up and down the house for letting it go, and then you spend months scouring Audiogon hourly to find an exact replacement. Yes, you know there are other pieces out there that might offer a 1% improvement in performance, but this is the item that continues to give you 99% of what you need. So, while you might be tempted by the latest hottie reviewed in Stereophile, you stay loyal to this amp, this speaker, this DAC, whatever it might be, because, to you, it just sounds right.

I’ll start by nominating these as my keepers:
* McCormack DNA125 power amp – musical with all sorts of speakers, plenty powerful enough, and reliable as the rising sun
* Vienna Acoustics Haydn speakers – I try various speakers now and then but I keep these around because when they sing I forget about evaluating equipment and instead just let the music play