2. amps-preamps
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Premature gear defenestrations

I'm wondering if anyone has stories of episodes when you upgraded gear only to realize that tubes or some other smaller change would scratched that itch?

These fora are chock full of comparisons between various kinds of gear -- often involving tubes or other important parts of the chain. Too often, the comparisons are apples-to-oranges because too many variables are in play.

But we sometimes neglects those variables, ourselves.

So...can you think of a time you sold a piece of gear only to realize later that you should have tried different tubes or better cables, etc.? In other words, times you didn't quite do due diligence and made a change too quickly? What happened?
hilde45

Showing 1 response by mulveling

mulveling's avatar
mulveling
2,235 posts
 
I’ve sold and regretted quite a lot over the years. There are many instances when I’ve sold and rebought later. There even are a few instances where I’ve sold and rebought a piece 2 or 3 times! But as time marches on and the system has evolved upwards...I’m hard pressed to think of a piece that I’ve sold (at least) once that I couldn’t live without today, or that I think was close enough to achieving next-level "nirvana" to warrant current best-available tweaks & tube treatments.

Probably the closest is when I sold my VAC Renaissance III preamp w/ phono stage option. I could certainly live without the line stage section (even though it was nice) - that’s why I sold it. But wow, did I ever miss its phono stage. I tried to convince myself so hard the Rogue Ares was on par with it - but it wasn’t. I sold and rebought the Ares 2, 3 times (including Magnum upgrade version) trying tube rolling, SUT rolling, and all manner of tweaks to bring back that VAC phono sound. Each change seemed to bring temporary relief for a day or 2 - but then inevitably melted away leaving me where I was before. Finally I just bought the (then) new VAC stand-alone Renaissance phono stage, and even though it cost a lot it was well worth it.

I would’ve been happier, with less wasted time and money if I’d kept the VAC Ren III just for its phono stage (even bypassing the line stage, as necessary) until they released their standalone Renaissance stage.
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