PI: No surprise that you received good advise (even better that you took it). I have found in many cases dealers work hard to carry equipment that works especially well together. It's when we get the itch to upgrade that things get sticky and fraught with pitfalls. I say once you find it stick with it, as Bluenose learned. But if matching equipment gives you a kick, finding a great combo can be quite a rush. My most recent find is a very unassuming piece the NAD L-40, which appears here frequently for less than $500. It's a receiver with a built in cd player for goodness sake and it sounds great on its own, but paired with a push pull 300B amp made by the lesser known Canary Audio (301MkII) the combination rocks. I couldn't decide in this case was it the sound or the music that thrills? I figure it's one of those ever so rare occasions when it is both: mesmerizing to me at least.
Combinations that exceeded your expectations?
Putting the right equipment together is a real art--mixed with a good bit of dumb luck. Fortunately, experience sometimes does help get really stunning results by matching equipment from different manufacturers. I'd like to hear what equipment (like speaker/amp or interconnect/speaker cable or source/preamp) when paired together others found elevated their system to another level. Though entire systems are interesting, I'd prefer to narrow it to the juicyest equipment you've had the good fortune to pair up--and by all means name names.