Great Audio Buys

[Guest sacd lover]

Having bought many numerous sources, amps, headphones, speakers .... you name it. I wondered what are the purchases you got for especially good prices .... or that you are just bowled over by the price performance ratio. This can be new or used gear. I am 50 and have been buying audio gear for 35 years now so my list might be a little longer than most.

To start the conversation off .... I am still shocked how good the little modded grado sr-80's Reks gave me sound. Thanks again Reks!

The senn 595/120 ohm headphones that most people ignored continue to rival my favorite senn 600's .... and these cost me $110 shipped/ used. This is my favorite heaphone with the amps using 5687's. I love this headphone.

My old chassis mpx3's that I bought for around $425 shipped continue to excell with the addition of 5687 output tubes. three years old and not a hint of a problem

The old chassis Supra I bought for $750 shipped from leftistelf, plus $300 in upgrades, is currently my best amp period. This Supra amp along with the Supra-X I got from Hirsch have to be my best buys for a headphone amp period.

But the absolute best buy probably has to be the 7n7/ 14n7 tubes. I paid $2.25 each for my 14n7's and they continue to walk over my best tung sol, ken rad, NU 6/12sn7's .... or anything else I have tried for gain tubes in the SP amps. People are now paying $375-400 a pair for tung sol black glass. But every time I put one in an amp I dont think they last two days before I put the loctal tubes back in.

[PFKMan23]

Can I play ball too?

ok...

1. The SACD Mods 555ES that I bought off of Audiogon a couple months ago. It's an awesome source and I got a great deal on it.

2. the JVC headphones I bought offf of earl recently. They rival my 701s as my most used headphone.

3. The 14n7s definitely rank as one of the best purchases I've made

[thrice]

The NOS Stax SR-Λ Pro I just bought from Headphile has to be the best purchase I've made to date.

[ojnihs]

Koss KSC-35 has to be my favorite budget buy ever and I find that I use it way more than my K271S.

[tkam]

Not exactly budget items but here goes...

1) L3000 - I get more joy out of this headphone than I do any other gear that I own

2) APL Philips SACD1000 - I had owned a number of sources prior to getting this player, even a couple in the $1k-$2k price range. None of them were even remotely close to being as musical as the APL SACD1000 is. Even now with my modded Opus 21 being an overall better player the SACD1000 still portrays female vocals with a sense of realism that I haven't heard anywhere else.

[aerius]

The AKG K340, $130 plus another $20 in mods and it kills anything short of an RS-1. Squashes all current production Senns & AKG's like a bug.

The Denon DN650F pro audio CD player. Uses the nice PCM1700 18-bit DAC and a super simple output stage. Rip out the generic film & electrolytic coupling caps in the output and replace them with silver mica and polycarb or polyprop caps and the performance goes up a lot. Replace the generic diode bridge with Schottkey diodes for a blacker background. I got mine off ebay for about $40 shipped, but I've seen them being sold for about $200 or so. Modded it'll give the Eastsound E5 a really good run for the money if not beat it.

6BL7 & 6BX7 tubes. I bought some at the local surplus store to try out, liked them ever since. Huge dynamics and soundstage on these tubes, and once the operating point's dialed in the tone's pretty good too.

But the best? 1633 tubes. The 25V version of the grey glass RCA 6SN7. At $4-5 a pop I can buy tens of them for the price of a decent 6SN7. I've hoarded a nice boxfull of these tubes.

[tiberian]

lavry black da10.

gilmore lite with power supply.

[Dusty Chalk]

The micro-Stax setup that Dave had, what was it, the SR-001 Mk II? 98% of the magic of electrostatic earspeakers for a fraction of the price.

That K1000 sale that Headroom had, when they were blowing them out. US$379, was it?

I don't usually get bargains.

The Quad 22L seems like a steal -- US$1600 (and that's the MSRP) for a beautifully finished (7 layers of lacquer?), wonderfully sounding fullrange floorstander.

[thrice]

Yeah it was Todd the Vinyl Junkie that had the K1000 on sale for like $375-$399. Something ridiculous like that.....Oh if I only knew. I would've bought 5 and sold 3.

[n_maher]

I'm probably going to get torched for this but my one great audio buy in the headphone realm would be the HF-1. With a little modding to my ears they scale up near the RS-1 and may in fact be better, depending on your sonic preferences. Even stock I find them better than the 225, 325 and 325i. And that's ignoring what they're worth on the open market now.

[recstar24]

Grado HP-2's for $600

HD-25 for $400

[grawk]

the best deals I've gotten:

w10vtg for $350

HP1 for $800

mpx3 for $425

hf1 for $200

um2s as a straight trade for ER4Ps that I got for $125

[deepak]

I'm probably going to get torched for this but my one great audio buy in the headphone realm would be the HF-1. With a little modding to my ears they scale up near the RS-1 and may in fact be better, depending on your sonic preferences. Even stock I find them better than the 225, 325 and 325i. And that's ignoring what they're worth on the open market now.

Thats my audio best buy as well. $200 for an awesome sounding Grado.

60 GB iPod I got used just when Apple announced the new ones another good buy, it gets a lot of use.

Altec Lansing iM716 IEMs, I prefer them to the Ety ER4p.

TheSloth gave me an awesome deal on the K1000, but not really a great buy since I'm going broke building a system around it. But I love them.

[Orcinus]

Sennheiser HD600 for $150 CAD.

TEAC 3340S for the cost of replacement heads and NAB hubs.

Sony PS-22 for 3 tapes and empty reel.

Kenwood KA-3055 for free.

[grawk]

$5 - 1 hit of windowpane

$9.95 - Jimi Hendrix - Are You Experienced

For under $16, a life changing experience

[TheSloth]

TheSloth gave me an awesome deal on the K1000, but not really a great buy since I'm going broke building a system around it. But I love them.

So glad you're enjoying them, not so glad they are destroying your wallet with ancillary equipment!

My best audio buy of all time was a new pair of QUAD ESL988's. They were ?2500 ($4.7k) at the time. Why a new pair of speakers at almost retail price? Because these, or perhaps their bigger brothers or newer siblings are still my cost-no-object speakers. $4.7k is a lot of money, but when you have just bought the very best speaker that money can buy for your use and ears, I think you've done pretty darn well! I've heard speakers costing well into silly money territory. I even heard a Nautilus (the real snail) once. Given unlimited money (and space to put them), I'd still go out without hesitation and buy a brand new pair, probably of ESL2905's. The rest, I'd spend on associated equipment.

[dcfis]

Sloth do you think the newer quads are worth the premuim over the 988/989? I havent heard the new one but Quads are right up my alley in all that Ive ever heard, they never dissappoint.

[postjack]

I'll be the one with the lame answer and say the HD580's from amazon for 125USD shipped. Not exactly the most super secret exclusive deal ever or anything, but in my opinion these are world class headphones at a ridiculous price. I paid twice as much for my HD650's (250USD for 650's is a good price as well, imo) and enjoy both headphones just about equally.

I've ordered some HD600 grills from Sennheiser to see if they really do add more "bass extension". If nothing else they'll look nicer.

[Guest sacd lover]

I bought the a couple pair of senn 580's from Amazon too .... great deal. I think the new Singlepower Extreme is the best new amp buy out there. This amp is so good for so little in comparison to the other amps available; tube or solid state. Finally, I wish GE could get some more of that gold alloy wire. I am still most pleased with the Enigma Audio gold alloy IC's vs anything else I have tried.

[deepak]

grills from Sennheiser to see if they really do add more "bass extension"

I'm going to take a guess and say that a mob at Headfi told you this? And they all registered in 2006...

[bhd812]

I'm probably going to get torched for this but my one great audio buy in the headphone realm would be the HF-1. With a little modding to my ears they scale up near the RS-1 and may in fact be better, depending on your sonic preferences. Even stock I find them better than the 225, 325 and 325i. And that's ignoring what they're worth on the open market now.

My fav of the Grado line that I have now..to me the hf-1 was a best buy for $200.

My g08 was the best of the best deals ever, cant say how much I did pay but even in 5 years I can sell it used and still make profit.

My sixpacs used were a great buy also, I wont say how much again just in case I will sell them later.

as far as using the item goes my 600's at $170 shipped was amazing..still my main headphone today.

I bought 6 sets of mit Term-3 interconnects for something like $80 for all of them..

I coolest buy was from an ebay auction of untested 12au7's. i think there was 60 of them for something like $20. I tested half of them and only 9 were bad, had a shit load of matched pairs (perfectly matched), and a few perfect matched quads, also all the rest are good enough to sell. the lot came with rca clear tops,Baldwin (raython) yellow label black plates, Salvania's and I forgot the rest..

[Guest sacd lover]

I'm going to take a guess and say that a mob at Headfi told you this? And they all registered in 2006...

:laugh: :laugh: .... good one!

[postjack]

I'm going to take a guess and say that a mob at Headfi told you this? And they all registered in 2006...

:'( :'( :'(

Yeah, that sounds about right.

[postjack]

:'( :'( :'(

Yeah, that sounds about right.

However, they also told me to get an HD650 cable on them, and I did, and it added an aura of sonic excellence unmatched since the grateful dead built their infamous "wall of sound". seriously, no matter what I listened to with the HD580's with the stock cable, it sounded like someone stuck a microphone up their ass and ran up and down a flight of stairs recording what came out. Once I hooked up the HD650 cable it was like "the veil" was lifted. all the sound was brighter, warmer, more detailed, darker, it really brought in the soundstage while simultaneously expanding it into new frontiers of sound and hope, and all around sonic aural excellence has since ensued. its like before the sound was constrained and like horse shit, and afterwards like a fine delicious pastry.

[deepak]

I wish I had my HD580 to try this experiment. I have 2 stock HD650 cables right now.

Someone I trust on another hardware forum (with a very good setup) said the difference was about 2% between those cables.