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Excess Gear and Speakers, Used or Unused

Unused Gear and Speakers

  • Set Up In Other Parts Of The Room

    Votes: 5 17.9%
  • Set Up In The Bedroom

    Votes: 7 25.0%
  • Placed On Rack As Display, Not In Use

    Votes: 6 21.4%
  • Packed In Boxes, Kept In Storeroom For Future Use

    Votes: 17 60.7%
  • Others

    Votes: 7 25.0%

  • Total voters
    28

ryder

pfm Member
I was wondering how do people cope with excess gear and speakers and how many have a separate hifi in the bedroom.
 
Three here: main system front room downstairs, nearfield mini-monitor rig upstairs and a TV (two channel) system in the back downstairs room.

I’ve a fair bit more than this either boxed up, on shelves as ornaments or in the restoration queue. At this point in time vintage/classic audio is doing a fair bit better than my savings so it is pointless selling. I also enjoy having some degree of redundancy and some choices to mix things up a bit now and again, though I’ll certainly have to move a fair bit of stuff when the time comes to retire to a smaller house. That’s a good 10 years away though.

PS It’s amusing in that when I bought this house (a fair sized 3 bed terrace with two living rooms and a cellar) after living in flats all my adult life I feared it would never be anything more than mostly empty and unused. It is now absolutely full! All of it.
 
Until last weekend, I had a bunch of spare amplifiers, carts, tuner and cassette deck in storage. Now, they are listed for sale / auction. Hoarding just takes up space and ties up cash that could be used for other things.

I'm keeping the NAIT2 and Nakamichi deck though ...
 
Thanks for the response Tony. I moved from a large house to an apartment about 2 years ago and currently do not have sufficient space to store some of the excess gear. I have sold some of the hifi and there are still a few left which I feel like keeping until I decide what to do with them. Although the current place is new, nothing is permanent I may relocate in 5 or 10 years time.

With regard to the excess gear, currently my biggest problem is the Harbeth SHL5+ as I do not have the space to set them up elsewhere in the room. I could still move them to the bedroom but it will add to the clutter although the room is fairly large. It is unfortunate I couldn't set up the Harbeth alongside the Marten as the latter does not sound too good when the Harbeth was placed at the side walls. (the Harbeth sounds terrible at that spot anyways)

The image below shows the 2nd attempt to accommodate 2 pairs of speakers with the main system which again failed. The Harbeth will either go to the bedroom or packed up in their boxes.

IMG-20210401-055648.jpg


I still have 2 amps, a CD player and another small bookshelf.
 
PS It’s anusing in that when I bought this house (a fair sized 3 bed terrace with two living rooms and a cellar) after living in flats all my adult life I feared it would never be anything more than mostly empty and unused. It is now absolutely full! All of it.

It's the same syndrome with sheds and greenhouses, Tony, leading to the general advice to go bigger than anticipated needs dictate. There is a name for this, but it escapes me at the mo'. There was only one occasion in my life where I might have bitten off more that I could chew, and that was buying and occupying a 25 ish room Victorian house (of which, 5 were cellars and 5 were loos!).

I'm the opposite to a hifi hoarder and sometimes wish I had a back-up. All kit is used daily in the kitchen, office or main room plus ghetto blaster in the loo (appropriate piece). A friend in Thanet is the opposite. He not only had mid/upper end systems in his kitchen, spare bedroom, office, dining room and main room, he has 'spares' like an Orbe/SMEV and Lyra (plus others). He lives by himself!
 
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I used to have loads of ‘spare’ kit. Now, anything that isn’t being used is moved on. Liberating.
We got a huge dose of liberation when we moved from Seattle to Sevilla a few years ago. We sold the house (in a bubble) and almost everything in it and took 3 giant duffel bags on the plane. It is 10x as much effort to get rid of something as it is to buy it in the first place (especially these days with Amazon, etc.). It's a huge burden if you let it get out of control.
 
I've a few bits, my trusty Sony DVP-S9000ES CDP, a Cambridge Audio A5 (both free) some DIY speakers in the form of some full-range drivers, all firmly at the budget end of the scale.
I've still a pair of ATC SCM10/Target R1 stands as it took so long to find a pair before I don't really want to sell them.
I do have a REL Stadium II sub spare but I plan to use it in a small Home Cinema setup in the future once some building work is done.
 
The only "extra" kit I have is an unfinished FirstWatt F4, a faulty Michell Argo HR and a Leak Stereo 70 with old Dynaudio Contour speakers. The Leak/Dynaudio combo is in my youngest daughter's room with a Lenco B55 turntable. Apart from what is in my signature, I have an AVM all-in one in the livingroom with LBMs (Litle British Monitors) fed from the tape out.

That said I have never hoarded hifi and have never decided to keep a "spare" amp or two or three cartridges to change between. At one point I was considering two turntables for two arms but after I bought the PTP6 Lenco that accomodates two tonearms, that is what I go with. So I never held on to very good kit for use as spares.
 
I've some spare items, either boxed and stored in my home in the bottom and top of a walk in wardrobe or in the music room along with the main system, though I guess I really should move a pair of speakers out.
I also have a Denon midi system and old Celestion 9s in the garage, which gets more use than the main system and a ghetto blaster for when I'm painting and decorating or doing indoor DIY.
I'm always hesitant to sell the extras as well you never know when you may need a spare.
 
I voted all four options except ‘set up in the bedroom’ as this is one place that I would never even think of trying to put any hi-fi!
 
Some of the 'better' spare kit I've used to make a second system in the dining room. Naim amp, linn axis and sonab speakers makes a nice noise (RPi for streaming) - my wife seems to enjoy having it there, but I'd be kidding myself if I thought she wouldn't be equally happy with a Sonos One.
Other spare kit is boxed up and kept in a dry lockup. I'd love to sell off all of my spare kit but it seems like a lot of effort. I could certainly do with freeing up some of the cash trapped in all that kit.
 
Selling makes sense if the spare kit is not convenient to store and/or is worth selling - I have some very good floor-stander speakers that are almost as new but were never fashionable so are worth just £2-300, so they'll stay.
 
We got a huge dose of liberation when we moved from Seattle to Sevilla a few years ago. We sold the house (in a bubble) and almost everything in it and took 3 giant duffel bags on the plane. It is 10x as much effort to get rid of something as it is to buy it in the first place (especially these days with Amazon, etc.). It's a huge burden if you let it get out of control.

Whenever we move from here, we’re doing similar. Already discussed it. I’ve got barn fulls of ‘stuff’. We’ll take very little with us, certainly no furniture etc. The buyer can have whatever they want, or it will be given away / house clearance. There is nothing worse when you see people who’ve downsized with furniture etc that is just so wrong / oversized.
 


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