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The Worst Sounding Piece of Kit You've owned.

Isobarik

Isobarik

pfm Member
I've made a few blunders purchasing Hi-Fi gear as no doubt most have on this forum.
The worst sounding for me was a Rotel RX-1603 stereo receiver.
Simply awful! Tried different loudspeakers,cartridges but it still sounded dreadful.
I remember having a Garrard 401,SME 3009 mk 2 and a Shure V15 at the time so it wasn't my source.
I thought there was something wrong with the unit so rang the service department. The engineer who spoke to me said there is nothing wrong with the unit.....it's just Crap! Sell it on and buy something else:eek: which I did.
Thank god Rotel saw the errors in there ways an since then have made some excellent gear.

It makes me shudder just thinking how bad it sounded!
Regards
Ray
 
NAD D1050 dac. Truly dirge-like awfulness. By far the worst piece of kit I've ever owned.

Managed to sell it.
 
This won't be popular but some years ago I bought some Celestion Ditton 15's to try them out as they were as speaker I had aspired to back in the 70's but they were very disappointing. Fortunately I had no trouble selling them on and it would appear they are more popular than ever; not sure why as they were nasty, thin sounding things. As if to confirm my earlier experience, a couple of years ago a friend was using some 15's in a pretty mediocre sounding system. He tried my no longer needed Arcam 20's and the system came to life. Now to be fair to these aged Ditton 15's, they were probably not at their best but they seemed, like the pair I had ten years before, a thin and shallow sounding speaker.
 
I had a home demonstration of Triangle & Musical fidelity which I didn't like or rate, didn't buy them though.
 
Recently, a Mission Cyrus 1
Historically a Teleton amp, so bad I aspired to an Amstrad (at the time) and a silver Philips stereo top loader cassette recorder.
 
Only a couple of things bought in sales, and not for many years. I bought a pair of Bolivar 64 'speakers in the 'seventies as KJ had them massively reduced in a sale. Never liked 'em. Even the cabinets felt weird.

Mick
 
Neat Petite III, boomy bass and the tweeter (brand new from Neat) was not well integrated with the mid-bass driver. They looked nice though IMO.


Neat Petite III by Robert Seymour, on Flickr

Klipsch Heresey II, tried on the floor, against the wall, in the corner, on stands and could not get them to sound at all good. Horrible midrange/low treble coloration. Wanted a perfect combination with the Decware Zen SET, they only lasted a few weeks.


Klipsch Heresy II by Robert Seymour, on Flickr

Fortunatly both were bought second hand and I did not loose on them IIRC.

Some amps...

Eagle SA-100, little vintage EL84 SE integrated, couple of watts and all of them distorted. Bit of fun but not anywhere near high fidelity


Eagle SA-100 by Robert Seymour, on Flickr

Antique Sound Labs (ASL) Wave, little 8w Monoblocks, weak bass and grainy sound. Terrible.


System by Robert Seymour, on Flickr
 
Tellurium Q Black speaker cable.

Sounded like it looked - thin and not enough cable to create lower frequencies.

Relieved when I sold it to someone who was fully happy.

Lesson - do not believe mass enthusiasms, avoid groups with group mentality. Be grateful when you can sell something.

Anyone want an almost new Omega Seamaster, Railmaster? Looks great
 
Linn Sara - coloured mess.
Mission 770 - bland, bland, bland.
Naim SBL - sounded fabulous on the 5% of music that is recorded decently.

First two particularly so, since I bough them both new. All sounded great at the dealers, but much less so after a few weeks at home.
I was saved by Linn Kans after the Saras and Shahinians after the SBLs (what a relief/massive upgrade that was!).
 
I’ll second Klipsch Heresy’s. They did some things ok. I liked the way acoustic guitar sounded...and the upper registers of an upright bass....but that’s about it.

I’d like to try Fortes, Cornwall’s or La Scalas as they’re all fairly common on Craigslist here in the US, but that’s a big speaker to “try”.
 
Long ago, a NEC ceedee player. I could hear the mechanism screeching, the sound was from the unit itself and not heard through the system but just hearing it when a disc was loaded and/or it was searching around on the disc was enough to kill whatever infatuation I may have had when I bought the darn thing.
 
Woodface said:
I've never had a bad system, always home demo's before purchase.
Click to expand...

Same here.

The only piece of kit that I've ever bought before listening was a Mytek Brooklyn.
But it was a calculated risk as I knew the Mytek 192 DSD quite well.
 
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