The worst piece of HiFi Equipment you've ever owned?

One of the first Hitachi CD players made. Lasted about 13 months ( 50 hours play time). Hitachi refused to help in any way. Never bought or owned another piece of Garbachi gear again.
 
Great thread,
must be the most sincere outlet for AKers to just rant openly about what all of us can relate to through our journey for audio perfection.. Laughing out loud while going back though the pages . Beautiful thread with a lot of history to boot. Thank s all!

Reading through the thread I was thinking the same thing!
 
Soon after buying my first (and only, so far) house in 1986 I bought my first "hi-fi" system. Everything I knew about hi-fi was taught to me by the salesman who sold me a Harmon Kardon HK440vxi receiver, pair of Hafler 200 stand mount speakers, stands, an NAD 6340 cassette deck, and a Dual CS-503 turntable with Ortonfon OM5 cartridge. The cartridge was actually very good at telling me what a POS the turntable was, for the couple of hours it worked. They swapped it out for a new one, no charge. Within weeks there were parts underneath it, and it was no longer a semi-automatic TT. It may have had a narrow S:N ratio and high rumble, but at least it made some noise.

A year went by and I bought from the same guy an Onkyo C-700 CD player. It went back to the shop 3 times in 2 years. The 3rd time the repairman (a factory authorized Onkyo one) told me the parts were NLA, so I junked it and bought an HK CD7400. That worked for about 3 years and went dead so I just listened to FM, cassettes and LP's for years until I got a Sony CDP-CE500 CD changer. I still have it, and it still works. The HK440xi went to my youngest son when I bought a Denon AVR1912 in 2012. He finally killed the HK in 2014 (he replaced it with an HK550vxi.) The NAD 6340 was junked in 2009 when the drive belt broke and replacing it didn't fix why it broke, the transport was just worn out and broke. The Hafler speakers are still in daily use by my niece and her husband, I'd replaced the tweeters with exact replacement Vifa in 2010.

Cliff Notes summary: Onkyo C-700, Dual CS-503 are the two worst pieces I ever owned.
 
I want to declare an all-time winner (think Nobel, Pulitzer, Darwin, Oscars) even though its been over 30 years
since it burned me. And the only reason is that there is now a large-scale movement to revitalize the dang thing:

Garrard Zero-100C

snaps cantilevers off on arm liftoff at end of play. Lost so many ADC XLMs, M91EDs, and I see people buying these
200+ grams of effective mass vinyl recutting monsters - totally eliminating inner and outer groove distortion,
while cleaning everything - all in a single pass.

Wanna run one today?, buy a DJ cartridge that is known to track at over 5 grams, have a thick cantilever,
BUT put three thin beads of Gorilla Glue along the cantilever to BRACE it against 1000ft-lbs of twisting motion.

Here's to Garrard's LAST turntable, and to its wedgie apocalypse on ADC - forcing them to keep revising the XLM
until it, too, disappeared off the face of the earth by trying to fix snapping cantilevers...
 
I have never understood the religion that is Bose surround systems... what absolute crap. Overpriced, ugly to look at, hard to use, but at least it HUGELY overprocesses and oversamples the unlistenable noise that emenates from the "speakers". I do love flipping vintage Bose, people will pay up for them. But you won't find any Bose either in my family room or living room. Way back in the day, I bought a 4.1 system at a garage sale new in box for super cheap now I understand why they were dumping it. Just like Sony, if you tell people it's great enough they'll believe it. Don't like that stuff either (unless I'm flipping vintage Walkmans or Playstations on eBay, then I love them!).
 
Bose Acoustimass 5. My wife made me put my Boston Acoustics T-830s into storage after she redecorated the family room in favor of less conspicuous speakers. I made a bad choice.
I second those who have said this is a great thread. I was actually thinking of buying a McIntosh amp on Ebay without ever auditioning one due to the unanimous 5 star reviews. Also surprised at Conrad Johnson.
 
I want to declare an all-time winner (think Nobel, Pulitzer, Darwin, Oscars) even though its been over 30 years
since it burned me. And the only reason is that there is now a large-scale movement to revitalize the dang thing:

Garrard Zero-100C

snaps cantilevers off on arm liftoff at end of play. Lost so many ADC XLMs, M91EDs, and I see people buying these
200+ grams of effective mass vinyl recutting monsters - totally eliminating inner and outer groove distortion,
while cleaning everything - all in a single pass.

Wanna run one today?, buy a DJ cartridge that is known to track at over 5 grams, have a thick cantilever,
BUT put three thin beads of Gorilla Glue along the cantilever to BRACE it against 1000ft-lbs of twisting motion.

Here's to Garrard's LAST turntable, and to its wedgie apocalypse on ADC - forcing them to keep revising the XLM
until it, too, disappeared off the face of the earth by trying to fix snapping cantilevers...

"vinyl recutting monsters" LOL... so I guess I should steer clear of these.
 
Onkyo M-282 Amplifier. Had no bass extension or depth- sounded like an AM transistor radio-thin, flat. Very weak unit. I sold it very quickly.

Back in the mid-80s, my Dad purchased a Fisher stereo system complete with speakers, a turntable and rack, He was so proud of it but it sounded so bad, I did not have the heart to tell him so. One day when he was not home, I checked all the connections and made sure the speakers were in phase. No matter what, the system sounded like the speakers were submerged underwater. I think he still has it but he does not listen to it any more.
 
Lol. I was surprised about Conrad Johnson myself. It's much worse when big money is involved in finding out the hard way. There are a lot of people who love the preamp I had but it just wasn't for me.
 
Technics SLP-2 CD player, circa 1985 or so. Went through three of them until I bought a Pioneer PDM-6 cart machine. That is still alive.
 
I was building my dream of a 70s all sansui system once, except for a hard to find quality sansui cd player ,so a early 80s plastic sansui labeled cd player was the only one i could find , what a pos, signal strength was very quiet, and song speed was like a worn belt on a tape deck. , maybee it was just tired but i put my phillips player back in real quick like.
 
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oh yes and a new garrard equalizer from service merchandise that had a setting for slider lights to flash green and red , back and forth across the front haha wow that was prob 30 years ago.
 
Denon 777 multiple disc CD deck. Horrible to load, crappy controls, bad sound, and died in less than a year. Still have it on a shelf in my garage collecting dust. It collects dust quite well!
 
Not saying they're complete sh*t, but the polk LSi9 speakers I had were pretty poor performers considering what I paid for them new. They were good for movies i guess with the entire LSi system hooked up.

When i switched them out with dynaudio focus 110s i instantly realized what audiophile equipment sounds like. I sold my focus 110s and bought some midrange paradigms - big mistake. I'm going back to Dynaudio for life.
 
time for a rant...

i haven't had a piece yet that is just pure trash. but my Sansui A-1100 rack system comes pretty close. the amp while it does have some balls (benched out at 122W!!) it just feels so bad!

A-1100 Amp: the volume slider is neat but the balance, bass and treble feel like sandpaper. everything on it rattles, mostly because the entire unit is held together by plastic clips and not screws. i do like the beeps when you push the buttons.

SE-300 EQ: This was a disappointment, its 7 band but the slope is not smooth at all. i hooked it to a spectrum analyzer and found the 60Hz slider does more work at 100Hz then 60. the 150 is closer to 300, 400 is close to 550 and so on. the sliders wiggle and move around like the boards are mounted with rubber bands. THEY COULDN'T EVEN PUT THE POWER LIGHT IN STRAIGHT LOL

T-700 Tuner: I like the tuner. nothing bad to say about that :) its the nicest feeling piece of the 4

D-69C Tape Deck. i have never seen this before. when you press eject the door will pinch your finger. the Dolby C is nice tho.

when you have all 4 pieces stacked they rock, rattle, creak and BEND?!??

i think im done ranting now.
 
An 80's PS Audio amp- lasted 1 hour
Vpi Jr turntable- I could have built something better in high school shop class.
Monster Cable Alpha cartridge- suspension collapsed
 
What I found amusing at the time--I was in the Sony outlet and the salesman was trying to push me towards a 100w/ch non-ES receiver. "But it has 100 watts, the GX700ES only has 70." I don't think he had a clue as to decibels, and how little difference it actually was on paper. But the ES is a heavy unit--there is way more going on inside than in the typical Sony receivers. My other Sony doesn't have any of the processing circuitry, but it is still rather lifeless and bland in comparison.

I mentioned I had more than a few Sony disc players die on me. Yet the record store I frequented (Car City Records) had this ancient Sony ES CD player that was running almost nonstop the entire time I shopped there (aside from when they'd occasionally play vinyl). There was definitely something better about the Sony ES line, for the most part. At least in those earlier days.

I just found one of these amps thrift shopping. Was researching it, and found this post. Anyway, according to the manual, the 70wpc rating is for surround mode. Stereo mode is actually 100wpc into 8ohm, and 140wpc into 4ohm, it even lists 170wpc into 2ohm!

This isn't the first Sony ES I've found thrift shopping, the first one was full of issues. This one seems stout though.
 
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