Would you buy a piece of gear with a defect?

A new JC2 BP is like 4500. If you were patient, a used one could come up at some point for 2500-3000.

1500 for a broken unit is a little high for me. You have no idea what is wrong. It could be something cheap or extremely expensive.


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True
But if Ben has a  local tech geek who is fair, honest, as we do here in the New Orleans area, Richard Gray who will give us best advice,, then he should ask his tech geek, If no tech geek avaliable, then Ben is on his own, Issue might bea  simply fix, maybe worse. 
I'd  tell Ben to buy it and ship it to RGray to ck it out. 
This is what I would advise. 
You say used @ $3k, here it is at $1500 = bargin. 

My Sunfire 600 signature was a B stock unit.  Unused for a substantial price.
had some loose screws on the transformer.
 Sent to two places, first sent to Bill Flannery’s for look see,..replaced some caps, new front meter light, said “is this unit new?” Yes it is, he said there were no signs of use at all.
  Then to sounds classic in Rockford, ILL 
replaced all screws, tightened perfect!
added a thick rubber mat to the top, between the cover and top of transformer. Been flawless since. A great amplifier!

I would be skeptical because of miss hooked up equipment but you might take a chance but i would go for a fully functional working unit for sure because the input stage may be fried on that side.

My Sunfire 600 signature was a B stock unit.  Unused for a substantial price.
had some loose screws on the transformer.
 Sent to two places, first sent to Bill Flannery’s for look see,..replaced some caps, new front meter light, said “is this unit new?” Yes it is, he said there were no signs of use at all.
  Then to sounds classic in Rockford, ILL
replaced all screws, tightened perfect!
added a thick rubber mat to the top, between the cover and top of transformer. Been flawless since. A great amplifier!

Oh how I wish you you could sell it to me!!

I'm always wary of picking up a defective unit for substantial money unless I have a pretty good idea of what's wrong and can either fix it myself or have a good idea of how much it would cost to get it repaired (if possible).  I also always assume that the current owner has looked into it and decided it was not worth their effort or there was a issue with repair.  I had an 80's McIntosh SS amp that had issues of my own making but found it very hard to find replacement parts - I know you hear that McIntosh services all of their equipment no matter how old, but there are some parts you just can't get anymore.  I trashed a couple of volume pots and I thought, how hard to get those?  But McIntosh nor my local vintage repair store wouldn't touch it because they couldn't get the exact part - the Mc contact called it a "boat anchor".  I finally did track down a pair of long shafted pots with the proper value, cut the shafts down to the proper length and fixed it myself, but what if it was something more substantial?  Some resistor values and ribbon cables for older Mc's are really hard to find.