Hi ,
Yes you are probably correct pound for pound maybe better options but I agree the resale is an issue. When you think Kondo is a whole other world even compared to AN price wise. No I haven’t heard of Thomas Mayer but will take a look, as a matter of interest how come you wanted to sell ? Thanks for reply
Here is the problem with the pound for pound X is better - it isn't pound for pound when looking at the NET cost.
I bought my Audio Note OTO Phono SE in 2003 for $1800 and I can sell it today for $2500 - okay inflation but still. It will be hard to convince me that the OTO isn't the best deal in all of audio since every other $1800 amplifier back then would be lucky to get you $700.
It's the same for my old AN J/SPe speakers - paid $2500 for them in 2003 and sold them in 2016 for $2,917. 13 years of happy listening and I got more than I paid back for them. The other speaker I was considering was Reference 3a MM De Capo i which was selling for exactly the same price $2500. I saw a pair secondhand for an "asking price" of $900 and these were in absolute mint condition - my AN J was 7/10 in the least popular colour - black.
Higher priced items won't do as well but as I point out - the difficulty in buying AN used is that it has been around for decades with the same model number - no one else really does that. So when someone posts a 15-year-old Jinro up on the second-hand market they always post the "new list price" of a new Jinro. So let's say the new one is $30,000 - they put up their Jinro for $18k and will come down to say $15k - you say "What a deal I got it for half off" but what you didn't do was go back 15 years and find out what the original Jinro price at the time the owner bought it - the list price back then was maybe $18k and with the negotiation he paid $15k - he got his money back! This only works mind you if you keep your AN gear for at least a decade because the prices keep going up and up and up which means the used prices ALSO keep going up and up and up.
Even my lowly little AX Two - I have been offered double what I paid for it 11 years ago. It was a $650 speaker and I have been offered $1400. Why? Because the new AX Two/II is now priced at $4,000. The old one isn't as good perhaps (I have not heard the new one) but mine is is less than half the price and so it looks like a bargoon.
Part of the reason for the AN UK deal is that most of this comes down to the quality of parts - SET design is SET design and many push pull tube amps come from the same textbooks - they sound different because of the quality of parts.
Once you are forced to buy your Transformer or you have to buy you valve bases from "parts-o-rama" then the parts dictate to you what you can design. At Audio Note - they can design what they want to design and then they can also design their transformers from scratch, their caps and resistors, they design and manufacture their own valve bases, knobs, and casework down to the glue they use to seal their transformers.
This is not - hey let's see what Lundahl makes and design our amp around "whatever" they happen to sell.
Many SET and tube manufacturers show nice fancy photos of the casework (the outside) of their amplifiers and very few pictures of what is going on inside and the inside to be blunt is the only thing that matters. Not the brand name - not a cool-looking case or that it has a copper chassis - I had a Pioneer Elite AVR Reciever that had a full copper chassis and the thing looked fantastic - it sounded like - well - a receiver which is to say not very good. But the main thing is that it looked very good.
I guess my point is this - if I buy a Jinro today and in 2038 I sell it and get my money back or I buy a XYZ amp for the same price from a no-name brand that may or may not even exist in 2038 then what - I get maybe 5-10% of my money back - if I can sell it at all? Will I be able to get parts for the thing? This is a real thing - Owners here noted that Mark Levinson is a pain because there are certain parts inside that can't be replaced should they fail - they don't make or stock any parts. Parasound uses some of those same parts made by ML. If your $12,000 amp breaks it is now a paperweight.
CD players? The Philips L1210 was a fairly common mid-level transport mechanism used by Audio Note in their lower-end units and by Bryston and Sim Audio - Bryston offered a long warranty so you can be sure it's a fairly robust drive. When Philips stopped making the mechanism AN UK bought most of the remaining stock - over 5000 drive mechanisms. Bryston and Sim Audio both stopped making their CD player because they do not stock a supply of things - most companies don't operate like AN UK. They plan to sell 500 CD players they buy 500 drive mechanisms - there is no profit in stocking extras. Not a lot of them anyway. They are both now using a lesser transport mechanism - the latter company hides it under some babble so no one can see what cheap mechanism is actually inside.
So while I can respect someone's choice to select what they think sounds better - I personally would rather choose my second or third choice if there are enough intangibles to make that make sense. It's the same for cars or printers or smartphones. I reviewed the Puraudio One - one of the absolute best SS integrated amplifiers that I have heard outclassing pretty much every other SS amplifier I have heard outside some idiotically expensive ones. I contemplated buying it - at $10k it was expensive but a "deal" for what it sounds like. The problem is it is a tiny company out of New Zealand - designed by the top guys from Plimnius who wanted out to make what they wanted to make.
Not long after my review and some others the design lead passed away - the partner responsible for the marketing end was no designer - the company folded. The $10k amp - well now what? Who is going to buy it? Who is going to send you the part or the schematic to fix it if there is no one left?
My advice to someone would be to buy a class A $10k Luxman or $10k Sugden Master Class, or perhaps Accuphase (if there is a dealer network in your country). I think the PureAudio One sounds better than all of these but it's not like these guys are lousy - they make good class A amps too - and you can get them fixed - and they have solid resale value - this stuff matters.