A couple of comments:
1) The wisdom of buying big-name products.
The history of high-end audio is mostly a story of well-known brands that are now dead, or, to the extent they still exist, are merely trademarks purchased out of liquidation proceedings that now have nothing to do with the companies/people that gave those trademarks their reputations, or, those brands have been sold so many times and the current iterations are so far removed from the glory years that they are now completely different companies. It doesn't always play out this way, but ...
CounterPoint? Toast.
Bozak? Sold to Chinese buyers years ago.
Advent? I think the mark is now with Jensen, and current products have nothing to do with legendary products like the Advent Loudspeaker. Advent was started by Henry Kloss (... who left KLH to start Advent).
Mark Levinson? The man Mark Levinson was pushed out of Madrigal, founded Cello, left Cello, founded Red Rose, left Red Rose, and then was left by now ex-wife and Sex and the City star Kim Cattral. The company Mark Levinson was sold to Harmon seven years ago, at which point many people, including key R&D people, in the Orange, Connecticut, facility were fired and the remainder transferred to Harmon's facilities in Massachusetts, and you are invited to peruse the threads here to see what has become of Levinson now (one clue - consumer audio makes up a tiny part of Harmon's revenues).
Phase Linear? Sold to Pioneer by Bob Carver in the 70's, and sold by Pioneer to Recoton - now it's a car audio line. Bob Carver founded Carver, until he founded Sunfire (not sure what became of "Carver" the brand).
Krell? Sold to a private equity firm (that means it will be sold again in four to five years when the P.E. firm "exits"). After litigation with Krell founder Dan D'Agostino resulted in D'Agostino's definitive exit from Krell, D'Agostino has introduced an eponymously named amplifier.
Audio Research and Sonus Faber? Both very recently sold to an Italian private equity firm (maybe Bill Johnson and Franco Serblin have consulting agreements and will be around for awhile, but Johnson is 150 years old and Serblin must now be rich, so don't count on it).
McIntosh? Sold to Clarion in 1990. Then sold again in 2003. At least the stuff is still made in Binghampton.
Yeah, the big, well-known hi-fi companies are the epitome of reliability.
2) AudioOracle vs. Hobbyists.
He is right to complain about hobbyists who provide uninformed opinions on Audiogon. Asking a question on this forum is like screaming out a question in the mall parking lot - it's a miracle that serious industry people like Ralph Karstens bother to post here.
I respectfully beg to differ with Brother MrTennis' statement that "configuring quality stereo systems is no great mystery and does not require a degree from harvard". It is a great mystery and any graduate of Harvard that would like to help is damn welcome.
3) Buying reliable gear.
It's counter-intuitive to the uninformed, but if you're really worried about buying something that will hold up and be "fixable" years from now, buy tube gear, and preferably, tube gear that is point-to-point wired. The circuit in tube equipment is the tubes, and when you retube tube equipment, you basically have a new piece of equipment. Most tube gear can be figured out by a good tech after the manufacturer is no longer around, even where there's no schematic, and if the piece is point-to-point wired (i.e., does not use circuit boards), then an untrained monkey can probably fix it. Solid-state amps sometimes use output transistors that go out of production and that therefore can't be replaced when they break - these amps have to be scrapped. This won't happen with much tube gear, as many use the same pentodes and small-signal tubes that are used in the million or so tubed guitar amps sold every year. Tubes are user-replaceable, while solid-state gear has to be shipped off for a tech to replace.
