Your worst HiFi/Audio purchases ever...?

[daytona600]

1st system LP12 / Naim / Sara fell for the flat earth two brands only . Few months later visited a Dealer with more than 2 brands in stock & sold the lot
Bought a Oracle / Koetsu , Audio Research & Magneplanars used for 15years

 

[Funk]

Bluesound Node 2021. Sounded fine but from a usability perspective the app had all the style and functionality of a high school coding project and was terrible to use. For something that was also supposed to work with Google Home it was a kludgy mess.

I sold it on within a week, thankfully for what I paid for it.

 

[MUTTY1]

Worse is too strong in my case: more like disappointing. Totem Arros. I’d had Naim IBL’s previously and the Arros sounded sloppy and coloured and slow. Fortunately, instead of going back to the IBL’s some Arcs turned up in the local paper, boxed for £400. This is obviously my best ever purchase( which I can’t stop mentioning whenever I can find an excuse to

 

[lawrence001]

I had one of those for a while - flawless reception of the local taxi rank

I would have stayed up all night listening to that, much more fun than radio 1.

I used to move the tuner around the high frequency FM band, I'm sure you used to be able to catch snippets of police radio before they changed them and the radio stations were allowed to use the frequency.

I'm not making that up am I??

 

[lawrence001]

focal berrylium tweeters from the 90's. NO.

Did they first appear in the Utopias, or were they straight into the 1008 type range?

 

[lawrence001]

Apart from the Coles ime.

The Coles used to come in around 12khz or so and gave audible air to speakers in the 70s with older tweeters that didn't go up high so well (eg. T27). The later supertweeters in the 90s came out with SACD so speakers could play the frequencies above 20khz nobody previously cared about (up to 60khz IIRC) and were probably a complete waste of money. But a minority may still disagree...

 

[Gervais Cote]

Linn Saras. Awful, muddy, coloured things.
Even worse, I bought them brand new.

What amp were you using if I may ask ?

 

[Tarzan]

Jungson JA-88D Class A integrated amplifier- had rave reviews, looked a million dollars and built like a brick outhouse, but the sound oh dear oh dear.....

 

[narabdela]

I'm not making that up am I??

Nope. I remember being able to listen to police radio on an old Armstrong vhf tuner longer ago than I care to admit.

 

[TheDecameron]

Nope. I remember being able to listen to police radio on an old Armstrong vhf tuner longer ago than I care to admit.

For a period in my old flat in Edinburgh 30 years ago, my LP12 / phono stage would pick up a taxi controller very loud and clear. It was most disconcerting. “and she’s buying a stairway to he…come in number 74, that’s your fare waiting”.

 

[Miss Ariel]

Having a Naim 42 upgraded to 5 spec.I was lent a 12 preamp by my dealer and loved it.Getting the 42.5 back from Naim I was so underwhelmed.The 12 sounded lovely a really sparkling HF and had a really vibrant alive sound.The 42.5 sounded really thick.The HF seemed really rolled off.
I then heard some new in the UK Bryston amps a 0.5 pre @ 2 B power and sold the 42.5 - HC -250 for the price of the Brystons.

 

[MVV]

Kan 1s, thin tinny and horrid stands. Isobarics shouty, and bright. Don’t think it was the speakers. I had a very big room with a suspended floor, a lowered ceiling and false plasterboard walls. The really stupid bit was whenever I went to the dealer he sold me an upgrade to the LP12 or Naim amps. I put in a dedicated power supply, bought Mana the lot. It the end only a pair of Ditton 66 and a WT Amadeus worked well enough but even then nothing to write home about.

 

[tuga]

Musical Fidelity B1 - low-fi dead sound

B&W Matrix 802 Series 3 - ear bleeding

Vinyl playback system - waste of time and money

 

[James]

Mistake purchases I've made a few. The worst was Mission PCM-7000 in the late 1980s. It was my first CDP, and the worst sounding one I've owned. My young ears much preferred LP12/Ittok/MC30 Super.

 

[Locheeboy]

Never made one, he says... walking away...smiling...smugly

 

[cooky1257]

ADC XLM cartridge, soggy mess that couldn't hold a candle to either the Ortofon M15e or V15/111, Systemdek 11x( the biscuit tin one) just shoddy trash that sounded flat and uninvolving- Sansui SR222 beat it by a mile.

 

[wd40addict]

Dual CS505ii. First proper Hi-FI purchase and hyped to death by magazines, but was it really better than all those Japanese turntables they poured scorn on? I doubt it.

I went through a series of cartridges none of which made much difference and after a while the strange headshell connections went intermittent. I also upgraded the mat, what a crap design the original was, and the raised edge of the platter meant mat swapping wasn't quite as easy as those same magazines used to imply. I even had to adjust the arm bearings as I noticed I had more 'needle talk' from them than the stylus!

Eventually I upgraded to a Rega Planar 3, this time my cynicism was turned up to max as this was another magazine rave, but it sounded better than everything else I demo'd.

I sold my Dual at the same time as a Marantz amplifier. The amp sold easily, but it took months to offload the Dual eventually going to a friend of a colleague.

In cold reality it probably sounded no better than the single play BSR it replaced other than no rumble. Certainly the BSR was better built.

 

[chartz]

Ditton 66 speakers. No treble, no bass, shouty mids. They didn’t like my room at all (the very room where my ESL57s shine).
I passed them on to my son. They work fine at his place.

I had a Dual 505 (FF15XE) for a few months back in 1981. A proper Thorens TD160 followed. Still have this one in my vintage Quad system. I only changed the belt twice (the pulley has a soft-start clutch).

 

[say it as it is]

Naim Intro briefly had a set with the crappy internal xo but the early scanspeak tweeters. No matter what I tried they were disjointed treble was good bass was posted missing then randomly turned up now and then

 

[Joe Hutch]

Nytech integrated amp. Horrible thing.

A Sugden Masterclass amp, which a) sounded awful and b) gave off a worrying smell. Fortunately the dealer was understanding and allowed me to return it.