Most Disappointing Audio Purchase

[riverrat]

...sony scd 222 SACD player, a true piece of junk. clunky, noisy, poor build quality...

Can't really argue too much, although most reviews of the SOUND were pretty good at the time I bought mine.

Adding Dynamat Extreme to all flat inside surfaces of the case, and more importantly, running the redbook (i.e. not SACD) signal through an Entech 203.2 really helped this unit a lot. Feels a lot more solid and really smoothed out the sound. I still have it and use it at parties when a changer is nice.

 

[Bigears]

Anything Bose...

 

[Susurus]

Has to be an NAD 6130 (?) cassette player/recorder. .[...].

Thanks, glad I just passed on one of those! :yes:

Could have gotten it for 20... that's a nice CD (or a third tank of gas now that Crude topped $100/barrel... :sigh: )

Not all NAD's are as good as my 7250PE apparently.

Anything Bose...

Bose? Sure, I had 301s. Not that terrible for a bookshelf as long as you had a good receiver (inefficient). But then you were system-unbalanced; any receiver good enough to make them sound passable should be matched to higher-end speakers. 201s were yuk.

Also had 501s, my last attempt to find a Bose I liked, $50 used, again, didn't seem really so bad with my Concept 6.5. See above...synergy...

Then your palate becomes more discriminating...you see what you've been missing... a year later I found $50 used Genesis 1's (decent bass!) and the 501s got given away.

99.9999% of Bose products make me wince now, but that rare monster amp (1800?) I would take in a second.

Susurus

 

[Parnelly]

My cousin has the 1800. its a pretty good amp. Solid, strong, and clean sound. The 1801 is a much stronger amp, its much bigger and weighs more. Plus it has a cleaner look to it with the meters and L.E.D's. The 1800 is a bit of a ugly piece. Used to come with a road case. And it just has L.E.D's.

My worst ever piece of equipment. Sony CD player, bout 3 months after purchasing it started to get selective with what it would play, seemed to not like all different kinds of burnt cd's. After a year it had to go in for a service and then again the following year. After the third time i just tossed it. The service center wanted 180 dollars to fix a 199 dollar cd player.

 

[BobHol]

Interesting old thread. I've had a few disappointing purchases lately. BUT in all cases the disapointment came from something broken or out of spec or just plain worn out. Still a lot of neat old "vintage" equipment out there but it seems to me that its getting harder to find equipment that is still functioning somewhere close to what it was like when new.

 

[Northwinds]

McIntosh MC2105

It lasted a month before I sold it, very disappointing but then again, it's one of their cheaper amps

 

[Decibel_116]

My last shopping spree on the MoFi site for some SACDs. I thought these hybrid SACD/CDs would be a good investment instead of buying the vinyl versions. In particular, Carol King - Tapestry, Billy Joel - 52nd Street, The Doobie Brothers - Toulouse Street. These are some of the most dull and lifeless recordings I own. The difference between my original vinyl version of 52nd Street and the SACD is striking. It's hard to believe the SACD version could be that much worse than the original vinyl - but it is.

 

[repo_code]

Adcom GTP-450. It always had audible background hiss, even on only-halfway-efficient speakers. Eventually I got a second system that didn't do this, and then started to hate the system that did. Once I realized it was all the preamp, that got sold pretty quick.

Kenwood KR-9400. I picked it up for cheap and fixed a faulty transistor, but it needed a bunch of mods before it sounded OK. From the factory is sounded kind of harsh and leaden. For a TOTL unit, I really didn't like the stock sound. It was easy to work on though. I moved the output inductors away from a steel plate, replaced tantalum coupling caps on the preamp with electrolytics, replaced a preamp opamps with a modern audio grade opamps on an adapter. I bypassed the tone controls which included an emitter-follower buffer that was introducing like .1% distortion all by itself (I simulated this.) It sounds pretty clean now but ho boy that took a bunch of work. I also redid the power amps to be "Honey Badger" topology, adding current mirrors and degeneration to the LTP and TMC compensation.

It's not even done: someday in my copious free time I'll reengineer the tone controls so they don't wreck the sound, and add them back in. It's embarrassing that it's such a Frankenstein. Well, it came out listenable. I wouldn't necessarily recommend the model.

 

[gslikker]

Most disappointing is a defective Sony TAF800ES I bought. The biggest issue is there is supposed to be some piece of metal or plastic around the big capacitors which is missing. Because of that, it is on the small pile of stuff I start repair only after doing the mechanical work (Knowing myself, if I first repair it the mechanical work never ever gets done anymore...)

Apart from that, according the descriptions I thought buying an extremely stury piece of equipment, but where they mount the big caps they have some double layer circuit card (read: two pieces of circuit card on top of each other, to give it any mechanical strength.)
At the back of those caps are two nice big film caps, which resonate physically of you touch them. A little glue might have helped....
Circuit board quality is so-so fo a TOTL amp.
There is a so-called "gibraltar" chassis, which has a big crack although rest of the amp does not have ANY sign of bad handling. So this "sturdy" chassis is a piece of junk.
I guess the crack in it came by itself, maybe it is there from when the amp was new...

It also has an EXTRA 5 mm thick plate bolted on the heatsink, which makes the heatsink just a lottle more THICK but it is not at the place the most heat flows through the metal. Conclusion: This metal piece is added to give the unit a little more WEIGHT doing nothing.
This 23 kilo heavy piece of amp does not justify "built like a tank" comments......

Apparently somebody was in there before who replaced transistors on the output board by ones of the ISC brand which are blown again, and the transistor damage is quite big (for some reason they did put the main amp in 2 pieces over 2 circuit cards not really enhancing troubleshooting, but also that one is faulty) I will have quite some troubleshooting and testing to do to get it working....

Paying 100 for this defective amp, I think I bought myself a PITA thing.
There are audiophile caps on it too, which usually do not have long life specs....

Anyway, it is a challenge and it is probably a marvellous amp, if working.

 

[howardtheduc]

Denon 5803 , I tried to like it..I really did. I rotated it in and out of 2 different systems, tried all sorts of speakers and ultimately was choosing doing yard work over listening to music! I donated it to a local thrift because I didn't feel right about selling it.

 

[Chrisxo55441]

Mac 1900 for me. Cant say it sounds bad but was expecting a lot better from what ive read and heard about it. its my least favorite and least used receiver could be going on the chopping block soon.

 

[willyrover]

Cambridge Audio Azur 540A Integrated Amplifier.

Purchased used about 5 years ago and I've put maybe 3 hours on it. Every time I hook it up, it's just "bleh".

 

[Ds2000]

Rotel RHB-10 amp. Ran it on a few speakers with the matching active pre. I expected a lot more, but it just laid a flat as hell sound across the front of the speakers down to the floor. Not an ugly sound, just uninteresting for how it looked and was built.

 

[GuyNoir]

Luxman R117 receiver. Good, yes. Did it bowl me over? Nah.

 

[ScooterMcTav]

Awesome Threadmancy - over 8 years between post 144 and 145!

Me, it was a Musical Fidelity a3.2 purchased used at a local hi-fi shop. Plenty of clean power, but it enforced flatness, as there was no bass, treble, loudness, or balance controls - you could only coax bass out of the unit listening at concert level volumes. Unfortunately, after inflaming my tinnitus over a two month period with it, it was traded to a nice gentleman who gave me an MA-6100 in trade, BTW a unit that does not inflame tinnitus.

 

[ELzekio]

about a year ago i bought a tascam cc 222 mk 2 cd/cassette deck. For $200. Total waste of money. Tascam cd lasers will not last much longer than 8 years before going bad.

 

[Jnevill]

I bought a Kenwood KR7600 from goodwill, it had a blown cap, so I invested in a partial rebuild. It can t hold a candle to my daily driver SX-1010 and 8080DB, so now it just sits gathering dust.