Quandary

You've mentioned you want to hear the Pass sound.  Why not just go to a dealer's showroom and hear a Pass amp?  Surely, somewhere in NYC there is a Pass dealer with amps in stock.  Road trip!  BTW, I have an XA30.8 and love it, but moving it around is a pain.

I agree with your thought to shun this deal....but you can still explore Pass....easy to bring your 12.5 pound Benchmark to your Pass dealer...while there is some disagreement here on some issues, there appears to be agreement that Pass and Benchmark sound quite different...without the expensive hard sell from the tech/owner, it just may be fun to explore Pass and other amps, especially with your amp so easy to carry around...shun the deal but give in to your curiosity !!!

Dealers I work with will let me take home equipment for free. I just give them my Credit Card number where they can charge me if I don’t return the item. Never heard of a charge just to demo. 

I CANCELED THE DEMO.

I have a couple of points to add.

1) Your Benchmark is one of the best amps ever made and has received rave reviews across the board. It's going to be hard to beat.

2) If you have the itch to experiment with amps I would suggest buying a used tube amp so that you have the chance of getting something that sounds more different. Your Golden Ear's are suitable for tubes (they have good sensitivity and a fairly flat impedance curve).

If you buy a used tube amp you can keep it as long as you want and if it's doesn't spew fairy dust out of your speakers you can sell it for about what you paid for it.

This is a response to JFRmusic’s post.  Yes, I’ve been able to demo a component in-home “for free” with the set-up you mentioned….and then subjected to incredulous looks by salespeople when returning the item and informing them it didn’t float my boat.  This particular incident happened about 40 years ago, but I still remember feeling embarrassed and a little guilty returning the item.   From a dealer’s prospective time is money not to mention that the item, with each demo., has some additional wear and tear that it didn’t have before.  A nominal charge for demoing seems more than reasonable under the circumstances.  This way, everyone is happy (perhaps not whole but at least a little wiser).  The customer, while not ecstatic over forfeiting some $ is at least not obligated to spend for a full purchase for a component that didn’t meet his /her  expectationsand the dealer, while disappointed about not making a sale at least recuperates some $ for his efforts.

I respect rvpianos opinion to decline the offer (this scenario obviously didn’t work for him) but I really believe this is a viable way of handling one of the more difficult problems with hi-end audio purchases and I wish more dealers would offer this service.

$300 for a “demo.” RUN!

I certainly wouldn't want free in-home audition or even extensive at-store audition. I believe, dealer's time and effort should be paid for. Question is how much.

Watch out for the upsell. Where he gives you the 60 watt mono Blocks and then after you are impressed, admits the 60s do sound a lot better than the 30 watt, and since you already have them at your house and all hooked up….let’s make a deal o the 60s. You’ll be much happier.  Right 

If they are that confident that it will sound better, let them get the one they recommend and bring it over. Hearing a different amp is of no value. I assume this is an expensive amp. I had a guy tell me that a tonearm would be a huge improvement for me, installed it on my turntable and said if I wasn't blown away, he'd refund my money (not store credit), He needed business, and I didn't think of the upgrade. I usually do smallish incremental improvements that I can hear. 

He was right on the money! I was blown away, and all I risked was my time and aggravation of driving an hour up and back and waiting for him to remount the cartridge and put the arm on. Cartridge took longer than the arm.

Why can't you bring an amp home and install it yourself? It should take a couple minutes to plug in the cables. There are places that will offer a money back refund if you pay shipping back to them. TMR for example....