Audio Research SP-3A-1 with original tubes?

[Blue Shadow]

Watched an interesting auction last night. An estate sale find ARC SP-3A-1 with the Amperex tubes in it. Unit was in great, original condition and popped for over 3600 bucks. They said the tubes were original, but with an estate sale find, who knows.

My concern is the tubes and whether they would be in great shape if this unit was used as expected for a number of years after purchase as most folks would do before being semi-retired as other interests move to the fore. Thinking these tubes have a number of hundreds of hours, maybe a few thousand on them, they should still work in most cases but maybe there need to be some NOS Amperex lined up to make the unit all it can be before the power supply caps get tired and the unit needs repair.

With NOS Amperex at about 160 a pop, that is some sort of premium for this unit over a very nice lesser tubed unit. Buying a set of NOS tubes could have been a bunch cheaper. But the unit did look good.

Heck this is $&¢ so here you go: http://www.ebay.com/itm/AUDIO-RESEA...eNts3Ndeg3nZUC9mrUVzSL8=&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc

 

[JohnVF]

I should tell my dad that last year's Christmas present to him is worth more than I thought! I had one that looked identical to this and passed it along. It's good but not $3600 good.

 

[Blue Shadow]

Prices on these is up above say 1500 generally but 3600 is a bit too high. 1200 would buy a set of NOS Amperex and that puts this unit at 2400 without tubes so the seller should be very happy when the buyer's funds are converted to US Dollars.