My favorite amp(s) from the Decware stable (and one of the very best amplifiers I have ever heard, period) was a pair of SV83M monoblocks that I owned for a short period of time.

I stupidly returned them and bought a Zen Select ..... which is also a killer amplifier.  The reason I decided not to keep the SV83Ms was out of the fear that I would not be able to find a supply of good matched SV83 / EL84 power tubes (six needed), 6DJ8 driver tubes (two needed) and 5U4 rectifiers (two needed).

As it turns out, there are now some very good current production tubes of those types that would have worked just fine ..... and the rectifier tubes last forever .....

To this day, I have only heard one other amplifier (at $30,000.00) that would light up a pair of the Hornshoppe Horns the way those Decware monoblocks would.  The speakers simply evaporated and the entire end of the listening room was a three dimensional sound stage.

I have kicked myself often for what turned out to be a very large mistake in not keeping those amplifiers .....

And they were knock dead gorgeous, to boot .....

I accidentally kept the "drool towel" that shipped with the amps and I occasionally use it for a crying towel when I think of how good those amps sounded .....

Randy

I certainly have never owned anything like the Torii Mk III. I'd say my current equipment is my favorite: the front end is the best I've heard, the amp and speakers are just like family members.

I do remember fondly the stereo of my Dad's that I grew up with, a Dynaco tuner, preamp, and power amp all modified by a friend of his who was an engineer for GE, plus an AR turntable and full range EV speakers mounted in a well built stereo console that housed the Dynaco and AR gear. That system had a great sound and I grew up with it in my ears. Which meant I didn't swallow the way that audio went in the seventies and eighties and ended up. . . here.

My dad still has the speakers (re-coned) in the cabinet and runs it with a Denon receiver. It sounds good, those speakers are magic, but not like when driven by the Dynaco components.

Well I have owned a lot of mid to high range off the shelf solid state which I thought was decent at the time.  I thought wrong.

The best gear I have ever had is my DecGear.  I run AIFF and Apple lossless feeding into a CSP2+ then into a Taboo. Speakers are currently DFR6.5's but I have a pair of ZOB's built and just waiting on the DFR8's to get here.

I saw a turntable that a friend of mine built. Functionally, it was impressive. But looking at it was painful. There has to be a balance of these things. I get in too much of a rush sometimes and then spend extra timing fixing it.

Man, when I think waaay back to those days, there was no good equipment, but really good times. Ok, a FEW other people had good equipment but not me. My friends dad had some awsome JBLs and Fisher stuff. But I only sported an old mono Magnavox 'all in one' piece. KOMA was my lifeline to something other than country western, and still I was glued to that contraption....