Your top 3 worst purchases ever



Hopefully none from me!

While many are asking what are the best preamps, best amps, best this or best that, wouldn't it be nice for others to know our worst nightmares with certain products?

:-)

My top 3s are:

1) Kora Eclipse preamp
From an Canadian member, the preamp arrived DOA. SInce it was shipped from Canada, return shipping cost and logistics are typically expensive and brutal. So the preamp was sent to a self-proclaimed Kora fan and expert in VA. Turned out, the repair cost was way more than I bargain for. The seller refused to fund it adequately. Ended up a super overpriced purchase with 2 months down time. Lesson learnt: Just return anything that is DOA even the seller talks sweet and offers to repair it to save you money.

2) Kora Galaxy Reference power amp
From the same Canadian member, this unit arrived with all output tubes mixed up. The amps kept blowing fuses and overheat. Bias pots do not work. Again, I was too nice to have it 'repaired' at seller's expense. Not a single penny was collectible from this seller, however. The unit was sent to the same Kora 'guru' who wasted near a grand of my money to fix it - turned out nothing was fixed, the unit suffered additional shipping damages, and I was labelled as a tube idiot by this repairman who just conned me $1k. Out of total frustration, I hammered the amp into pieces and sold it as scrap for $4 in Audiogon. That's a near $3k loss! Lesson learnt: Take anger management class.

3) Krell PAM-3 dual-mono preamp
Arrived working for first few days with noisy volume pot, then the unit caught on fire - the caps melted with lots of tar inside. Seller refused to take it back obviously since it was not DOA. Sent to Krell for repair, only to be told the repair estimate was near $3k (including $350 return shipping cost from Connecticut to New Jersey - $250 of which is for a Krell shipping box). Made perfect sense to me when I had purchased it for $550.

What are your lemons?
bsimpson
The worst of my purchases were early on:
1)I bought a pair of those direct-reflecting bose 501 to replace my $50 Pioneer two-ways, and returned them. Man, they were awful.

2)I did not realize how bad my (home-made) flexy rack sounded until it was replaced by a lighter, more wobbly ikea lack.

3) LFD Mistral looked good; sounded bad. Replaced with a far better SA-2000, which of course broke.
Thorens 318 - leaden, slow, dark, plodding. It did render wood instruments with a nice woody tone however.

Mission Cyrus 2 - So bad, I can oniy assume all the rave reviews were written by maniacs. Everything sounded chromium and brash and digitized.

Audio lab 8000P - sand preamp that basically stole the life out of music. The grocery store muzak playing Tainted Love sounded better than through this thing. Traded it in for a Croft Micro which was a million times better.
Cyrus 2 - terrible,chromium coloration. Those who gave it rave reviews were maniacs. Lasted a week before being replaced with an Audiolab 8000 power amp.

Audiolab 8000 preanp - dreary well reviewed colorless solid state. My T amp blows it away. I replaced it with a Croft Micro in 1986 and it blew it into orbit.

Thorens 318 - leaden, wooden, dull and that's with a bright cartridge. At least it wasn't expensive.