Here is the list of what everything up for auction went for.
https://staples.prod4.maxanet.aucti...vAOs0Dw==&pageNumber=pf6Q+hJtdeleDd9FfYpy9w==
https://staples.prod4.maxanet.aucti...vAOs0Dw==&pageNumber=pf6Q+hJtdeleDd9FfYpy9w==
Two thoughts:
(1) The components were sold by a "generic" auctioneer.... The Krells amps alone would have fetched more in audiomart or audiogon. Maybe even by one of the consignment stores. Heck, I search the Internet and this didn't come up.. if I had seen it, it would have been worth my time to bid on a few things (LPs for example) and taken a week to drive cross country with the van to pick the up.
(2) Bad marketing. Too many goodies at the same time into a badly chosen market place.
As it turns out, the guy really did have a lot of consumer products. Some of them, like his "custom" turntable looks like a very tweaked TNT with consumer product tonearms.
Honestly, I don't see so much DIY in his stuff. Sure, the big speakers, but the amps and preamps, etc.. all look consumer products to me.
Oh, one more thought... this doesn't look like a million dollar system to me.
(1) The components were sold by a "generic" auctioneer.... The Krells amps alone would have fetched more in audiomart or audiogon. Maybe even by one of the consignment stores. Heck, I search the Internet and this didn't come up.. if I had seen it, it would have been worth my time to bid on a few things (LPs for example) and taken a week to drive cross country with the van to pick the up.
(2) Bad marketing. Too many goodies at the same time into a badly chosen market place.
As it turns out, the guy really did have a lot of consumer products. Some of them, like his "custom" turntable looks like a very tweaked TNT with consumer product tonearms.
Honestly, I don't see so much DIY in his stuff. Sure, the big speakers, but the amps and preamps, etc.. all look consumer products to me.
Oh, one more thought... this doesn't look like a million dollar system to me.
And, no matter how much he had left to spend he wasn't taking any of it with him....
Did you read about the nutty extreme that he went to with construction for the listening space? I forget the exact dimensions other than the 17' walls but on the order of 30'x50'. I think the number was 1650 sq. ft.
He used double coursed, filled and rebarred cinder blocks so it was a aboveground bomb shelter with its own 200 amp service and HVAC. In the documentary he chuckled about how he bought 5 ft of his neighbor's property for 500 bucks but the legal paperwork cost him 10 grand.
The point that I hope to make is that he didn't spend all of that money on equipment.
Pete
Well, if you are going to calculate it that way... I too took great pains when we rebuilt (and added to) our house. Double walls, dedicated AC homeruns, new additions, etc, etc... so at the going rate, just my living room would run 400,000.
Hence, I don't count the building.
I think whoever wrote it up, just wanted to get the 'impact headline", that's all.
Hence, I don't count the building.
I think whoever wrote it up, just wanted to get the 'impact headline", that's all.
Ken Fritz is the one who said that he thought that he had spent $1.75 million. Looking at the equipment I think that he must have included more or less everything.
As I write this response I am struck by my own situation. I am hesitating about spending 500 bucks on replacing the 50 year old woofers in my LaScalas when the main reason I just spent way too much money on restoring my barn was to have a listening room.
In any case, I have been listening to my stereo a lot so at least I'm getting the enjoyment out of the investment that I had hoped for. My main take away from Ken's story is that he never really spent much time enjoying it, at least not compared to the decades that he spent working on it and the irreparable damage he did to his family while doing so. He didn't really want the destination, he wanted the journey.
Pete
As I write this response I am struck by my own situation. I am hesitating about spending 500 bucks on replacing the 50 year old woofers in my LaScalas when the main reason I just spent way too much money on restoring my barn was to have a listening room.
In any case, I have been listening to my stereo a lot so at least I'm getting the enjoyment out of the investment that I had hoped for. My main take away from Ken's story is that he never really spent much time enjoying it, at least not compared to the decades that he spent working on it and the irreparable damage he did to his family while doing so. He didn't really want the destination, he wanted the journey.
Pete
I have been wondering about this more generally. It's a bit a cliche that audiophiles listen to the equipment moreso than the music. I can say with some certainty that music doesn't bring me the same joy that it brought years ago. I'm in my late 30's, I remember years ago trying to revive my lost joy in gaming. I bought a new graphics card, tried to get back to it, but it just wasn't there anymore. I wonder if I'm chasing the same thing now in this hobby.
Saw this pic in the news yesterday:
Outlined in a red is what looks to me like an old JBL acoustic lens on the end a horn. Way back when, just after college, I did live sound for a few years. The outfit I worked for had a pair of JBL horns with acoustic lenses. Sounded bad to me. The folded sheet metal lens plates would vibrate at high volume, and they already sounded bad at low volume. IOW the horns sounded better without the lenses: less distorted. Made me wonder how much this fellow knew about such things.
Outlined in a red is what looks to me like an old JBL acoustic lens on the end a horn. Way back when, just after college, I did live sound for a few years. The outfit I worked for had a pair of JBL horns with acoustic lenses. Sounded bad to me. The folded sheet metal lens plates would vibrate at high volume, and they already sounded bad at low volume. IOW the horns sounded better without the lenses: less distorted. Made me wonder how much this fellow knew about such things.
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I've told this story before, possible here on this forum, but this thread is yet another place where it is relevant and should find an audience.
I was running a DIY audio group in California in the 2010s. At one event a guy showed up with his buddy. Together they were building these ultra high end tower speakers with baffles that were several inches thick and the at-the-time best available Dynaudio drivers, etc. Not in Ken Fritz territory, but very time and money intense. Evidently he had lots of high end gear at his home and it he wanted to build the ultimate speaker. I recall they sounded pretty good. Fast forward about a year and I get an email from the guy asking if I could help him out with a "situation". He was having some medical problems and wanted to sell some of his gear, and asked me to come up to his home, which I did. He was a retired armed forces guy had never been married. He was in to ham radio and HiFi. All his life he had been collecting stuff - in hid backyard he had a disassembled metal radio tower, like a 150 foot tall one. He had lots and lots of speaker drivers, mostly from Dynaudio and he wanted my help to sell them on Ebay. Turns out he had been diagnosed with some sort of brain cancer and had already had one operation. This had left him partially disabled and his speech was slurred. He realized that his condition was going to end his life and not too long in the future either. So he now wanted to "cash out" some of his high end gear. Unfrotunately, the old Dynaudio drivers used foam surrounds and many of them had decomposed and developed holes. You could certainly replace these with new surrounds, but the condition made the value of the drivers very low despite the high cost when purchasing them new. I took posession of about 15-20 different ones from him and listed them on Ebay for him, since he was not familiar with that platform. In the end they did not fetch all that much and it was pretty disappointing for him. All around him in his home was used gear for his hobbies, and now none of that could be of any use to him. I didn't see him again and I believe that he died within a year or so. The rest of his stuff was probably liquidated or recycled.
We are all going to meet our end. Our hobby is just something to occupy our free time for now, and there is not much that will live beyond our corporal selves. So keep it real, try to have fun, but be realistic and don't let it take over your life or your wallet!
I was running a DIY audio group in California in the 2010s. At one event a guy showed up with his buddy. Together they were building these ultra high end tower speakers with baffles that were several inches thick and the at-the-time best available Dynaudio drivers, etc. Not in Ken Fritz territory, but very time and money intense. Evidently he had lots of high end gear at his home and it he wanted to build the ultimate speaker. I recall they sounded pretty good. Fast forward about a year and I get an email from the guy asking if I could help him out with a "situation". He was having some medical problems and wanted to sell some of his gear, and asked me to come up to his home, which I did. He was a retired armed forces guy had never been married. He was in to ham radio and HiFi. All his life he had been collecting stuff - in hid backyard he had a disassembled metal radio tower, like a 150 foot tall one. He had lots and lots of speaker drivers, mostly from Dynaudio and he wanted my help to sell them on Ebay. Turns out he had been diagnosed with some sort of brain cancer and had already had one operation. This had left him partially disabled and his speech was slurred. He realized that his condition was going to end his life and not too long in the future either. So he now wanted to "cash out" some of his high end gear. Unfrotunately, the old Dynaudio drivers used foam surrounds and many of them had decomposed and developed holes. You could certainly replace these with new surrounds, but the condition made the value of the drivers very low despite the high cost when purchasing them new. I took posession of about 15-20 different ones from him and listed them on Ebay for him, since he was not familiar with that platform. In the end they did not fetch all that much and it was pretty disappointing for him. All around him in his home was used gear for his hobbies, and now none of that could be of any use to him. I didn't see him again and I believe that he died within a year or so. The rest of his stuff was probably liquidated or recycled.
We are all going to meet our end. Our hobby is just something to occupy our free time for now, and there is not much that will live beyond our corporal selves. So keep it real, try to have fun, but be realistic and don't let it take over your life or your wallet!
In a lot of ways Ken Fritz's story reminds me of my older brother. He has spent a lot of time restoring old motorcycles but almost never rides them. He had spent huge amounts of time building RC planes that he doesn't fly. He really seems to like the process of working on his projects rather than sitting around enjoying the results. When he finally finishes one project he doesn't stop and enjoy it, he starts another one.
Pete
Pete
