I hate it when there is a decent deal but something ruins it...
I was wandering by a Cash Converters in my town (glorified pawn shop) and looking for a decent used power amp to go with my Rotel preamp. What the heck - got a set of nice Tannoy speakers for $60 so you never know. Years back they had a Bryston 3b for $400 so deals are out there.
So the first thing I see is an Onkyo Subwoofer for $12. But yuck - it's no good. On a shelf I see a really nice Arcam Alpha 8 integrated, Alpha 8 power amp and 7SE CD player. I always liked the Alpha CD players (prefer the Delta amps) but the price was around $360 for all three units.
So I'm thinking not too bad at all. Don't really need the CD player or the integrated and they won't just sell the power amp by itself. They insisted selling it as a set. I tried to tell them that the power amp really isn't required since the Alpah 8 was an integrated and has a power amp on board. The guy said there was a "reason" it had to be sold that way.
The reason is I suspect that the power amp section on the integrated must have died. Buying that old of a CD player comes with risks and so what seemed like a good deal isn't. Damn I hate that. I will likely buy a little Rotel Power amp - I have to say I have been pleasantly surprised by the latest 2 Rotel model offerings of the past few years - really since about 2005 they have been making some in roads on the amplifier front considering the budget they're in. I have seen a few reports of people prefering entry Rotels to their big Adcoms and some others putting them up against some much more costly SS units. My dealer here actually prefers the Rotel power amps to their Bryston line. The new NAD Master series also has me interested.