He spent his life building a $1 million stereo. The real cost was unfathomable.

I suggest one can take the article at multiple layers.  The audio achievement...impressive; the family's life...somewhat tragic. 

Things have got to be pretty serious to disown a son.  Perhaps it wasn't solely audio that caused that, but still, that's tremendously sad and I would view as the largest failure in my life it it happened. 

It's also an allegory - plenty of the greatest-of-all-time type famous people have paid similar prices for their success, and there seems to be a two-way interaction between the price and the achievement. 

It is an interesting point - if your hobby was golf, travel, wine, etc., you'd have nothing to sell at the end and so you don't get your money back.  That seems like it would be reasonably true in audio as well, albeit there is some salvageable value there.  

I'd hope my kids would want some of my stuff.  But probably not - they really only need these tiny screens that fit in their pockets. 

If it wasnt audio it would have been something else. Nature of the beast. I say good on him if the journey made him happy. 

Did any of you ever think that the story contained exaggerated elements for effect?

@retiredfarmer I agree with you about buyers who ask for concessions when they arrive to pickup the item.  If the buyer simply decides they want to pay less as an in-the-moment change of mind, I'll politely decline the request, though it fortunately very rarely happens. 

In the case with Fritz, I agreed to pay his asking price, but he clearly discovered (albeit at the last moment) that he could do better pricewise.  He could have done the less underhanded thing and told me that he discovered he could get more and ask if I wanted to pay it.  Maybe I would have, especially since we had long planned the deal.  But he didn't care that I had made the arrangements, got the car, and took off from work - he made his decision and that was that.  Again, a true creep.

I appreciated and admired Ken’s system for years and enjoyed the video made a long time ago by his younger son. I wondered about many of the things that this article brought to light when learning that the system was sold for a pittance. I am glad that people who appreciated his work benefited from it but also feel bad that his family didn’t get more for all the physical work and emotional toll that it had on them. I’ve worried about that myself and have been very transparent about all of it with my family asking them to go on this site to post it for sale used with appropriate value attached to it so they can get something out of the system too. My wife really enjoys it so I also hope she will use it for many years if I happen to go before her. She knows how to turn it on, unlike Ken’s family it seems, and will have it going by the time I get home from work. I feel like the article was a great cautionary tale to all of us who have hobbies that can border on obsessions. We need to step back and evaluate what is truly important and if I were true to myself I would list my family first. We also need to recognize that not everyone shares our sentiment about these things. I often get a check when someone visiting shows a spark of interest as I’ll go on too long about how it all works. In the end it’s about the experience and how it sounds, I do love seeing people’s eyes light up when I play their favorite song. 
 

Thanks,

Steve

@srs148  no he could have stood by his word and got a bit less money. A man is only as good as his word.