PS: Typical McGowan Sound? -- HCA-2 & Classic 250

The number of these amps on the used market is disturbing, but more disturbing is what they are being sold for, or rather, what people are willing to pay for them! These amps can be bought NEW for what folks some are buying them USED for! Hot or not, it's unreal that they can sell for over a grand used, especially since the market is flooded with them, which does make you wonder..... The measurments where awful but many people do enjoy distortion of one sort or the other.

On a related note, the Musical Fidelity gear was also raved about and had a great demo policy, yet has a stronger following by consumers, so I'm thinking the MF A3cr gear may be a better bet. Most fortunately I will have the HCA-2 and A3cr in home to demo shortly, along with an Odyssey Stratos and Parasound JC-1 monoblocks, and am pretty anxious and excited to see how they all measure up!

A psychologist could make a career and a fortune out of studying audiophiles behaviour! It is sad that egos and simply people's need for approval are the motivation for the majority of online reviews (and maybe profesional reviews [ST !!!]), as any person can appreciate when reading audioreview.com write-ups! I feel that one has no credibility as a critic if they cannot evaluate the flaws of the equiptment along with the virtues, and also have an extensive resume of previous components used. For many reviews there is nothing but glowing remarks of equiptment they own, especially so from folks who recently moved from low-fi receiver land to seperates, or cheaper anything on up to mid priced gear, as is often the case with highly reviewed budget components, and then folks really feel they own the best they can afford, regardless of their limited experience, where you typically see phrases like:

"Best for under X grand"
"Beats products costing X times as much".

and so on with no basis in reality! Funny as heck to read but sad that many people can't see through the BS.

And since we are talking about the HCA-2, anyone else really disturbed by the claims stating that a $500-$2000 power cord is absolutely required to make this amp sound good!