Which piece of gear have you owned the longest?

UE 10 PRO CIEM over 10 years - still use it on stage, shopping for a replacement.
KSC-35 - 10 years plus as well

 

I have had my Maggie MMGs since 2003 along with an Acurus amp preamp combo. I have rotated several sources through. Currently contemplating a Moby for the Maggies.

 

Schiit Magni 1 since 2013, followed by HD600 a couple months after. I bought the Magni with a Modi, which I sidegraded to a 2U for the additional inputs. It's a little bright for my HD800S so I have a Matrix HPA-3B on the way, but otherwise it's been great. I might keep it around for the turntable or gift it to a friend who's plugging his Grados into a vintage Marantz receiver.

 

What?! Are we supposed to keep gear?!

I still have my Panasonic portable cd player SL-S170 purchased in 1994 with HS graduation funds. First two cds were Loreena McKennitt's The Vision and Cannonball and Coltrane.

I think my SE215 are, for better or worse, the longest other piece of gear I've owned. Perfect for mowing the lawn. And nothing else.

 

Hmm, I am not very loyal to individual items (and honestly I haven't owned really great gear before) - I try not to assign emotional value to them. I think my 2011 Shure SE215's are the longest continuously owned gear. I had an HD650 for 4 years, gave it up for a couple while I tried "better" headphones, then got one back almost 2 years ago, but the continuity was broken. I doubt I get rid of this pair any time soon.

 

I've owned a pair of Paradigm Titans since 1998 and an Onkyo integrated amp. On the headphone side, I've got a Headroom Max and a Headroom-tuned pair of Beyer DT880 250 ohms that I've held onto for five years. The Headroom crossfeed circuit still bests many of the cheaper software implementations I've heard.

 

Shure e4c 2004/05 I think.

 

I still have my Sony Walkman Professional WM-D6C. I bought it new in the early 1990s and used it a lot for maybe 10 years. If I hadn't broken the rather fragile headphones it would still be complete as new, including box and warranty cards etc. I didn't use it for many years now but occasionally I put the nicad battery packs in a charger and check it all works. The prices on ebay have become tempting enough that I'll probably sell it very soon.

Next oldest gear: Yamaha RXV496RDS Home Theatre amp from the late 90s or early 2000s. It now lives in the bedroom, running a pair of Wharfedale Diamond 9.0 speakers and a passive Wharfedale subwoofer. This is all fed by an old Eee PC running headless Debian with HiFimeDIY USB DAC. This gives me MPD and UPnP audio, all controlled from my smartphone or tablet or PC.

That Wharfedale passive subwoofer was originally part of my Wharfedale LoudPanel Flat NXT speaker system which I believe I bought around 2000 or 2001. The NXT panels sound horrible but the passive subwoofer is useful. I still have two pairs of NXT panels which are so bad that they didn't get used since shortly after I bought them and which still seem to be unsaleable lol.

Next exciting item: Sony ZS-M50 combo CD Player/MD Recorder/FM and MW Radio. I bought this in 2000. My friend worked in the local Sony Centre and as well as a silly price I got a promotional deal which included a free MD Walkman. I already had a top of the range MD Walkman recorder (lol again) so I gave the freebie MD Walkman player to some friends. Oh f**k I am so old I am almost black and white. This CD/MD/Radio still lives in my living room and gets used occasionally because the FM radio on it sounds really nice and I live somewhere with a good strong FM signal. I didn't use the MD player/recorder for about 10 years but occasionally the CD player gets a workout. Any other old bastards out there remember Sony from before they bought movie studios and developed a hatred for their customers? They built really good stuff that was better than the competition and also lasted decades and was truly worth the price premium. No shit. We had a Sony Trinitron portable TV that did over 20 years.

My next oldest gear is my iRiver H140 player. I think I bought it in the mid 2000s. I have replaced the battery a couple of times. I replaced the Toshiba 40GB disk with a 128GB SSD (iRiver H1128?) and I replaced the original firmware with Rockbox. It is excellent for 44.1KHz 16-bit. The headphone out is a bit noisy but the separate Line Out is of excellent quality so I run that into a Topping NX1 battery powered amp velcroed to the case. This still gets some use, these days mostly on long train journeys where 4G is intermittent enough for me to not rely on my smartphone being able to connect to my home music server.

tl;dr: I am older than you. I have old gear that works. Works great. For cheap. When yours does not. Ha!

 

I've got one too. I lusted after it for ages, but only bought in the later 90s. By this time, digital had taken over from hissing tape (casssssette?), and I got a minidisc for portable recoding and play back, so use of the Walkman Pro was short lived. However, it served as a second tape deck at home, and is still available for that (some cassettes need digitising; roung tuit required). I lost the headphones, somehow. How are they? I don't remember.

My oldest kit, otherwise is my Dual turntable. I'm afraid that is now encupboarded. That would have been my second turntable, and I bout it in 1990. Got the cash for it as a leaving present from a 16-year job.

But I've never really done the buy/try/sell, or quick upgrade thing. In that respect, I don't actually do the "hobby."

 

A shitty portable radio I got in 1986. Arguably not even 'gear', but I loved that thing and listened to it all the time. My dad uses it now.

On second thought, it's still going after 30 years this past July...maybe not so shitty after all.

 

Thads post reminded me that I bought a Sharp Portable Minidisc recorder about 18 years ago that I still have. I initially bought it to record lectures at school. I soon moved to building some miniature microphones and taking the thing to concerts. It worked pretty well. I don't use it much any more, but occasionally I'll dig it out to play back some of those concerts I recorded.

 

I am 28. My CD-player is a Sony CDP-750 with Philips internals from the age when Sony and Philips (/Marantz) ruled the two-channel audio market for CD-audio.

That thing is not leaving. Those overbuilt 16-bit DAC CD-players are great components in any audio system. The mechanism for carrying the CD alone is worth more than the actual CD-player right now. Some of those "black plastic crap" CD-players were over-engineered audio components that were more solid than their initial price tags indicated.

I also have a weak spot for the over-engineered Sony discmans that were almost on par with regular CD-players in playback and features.

These days though, no Sony for me. Their customer support and DRM measures, just no.

 

speakers tannoy 12 inches monitor gold dual... 40 years... sold because of need of smaller speakers...Very good speakers...

 

I've had an old Denon AVR-600 receiver since around 93'. I still use it to power my old Polk Speakers and it sounds damn good.

 

DT770 80ohms from 2002, I think. They don't get lots of use anymore, but they are the ones I use for guitar recordings at home. They are more comfy and easier to put on than my Focal Spirit Pros.

 

As is a vice grip.

 

This old trusty Sansa Clip+ is still alive and kicking after 7 years although it significantly goes out of breath quick due to the aging battery.
For a $50 tiny, plastic, lossless files player this thing serves its owner well beyond its expected lifespan. Seriously one of the better gadget of its time.

 

I remember the headphones as being unusually good and that I liked them a lot but but this was in comparison to 1990s earbuds, cheaper Walkman headphones and some very cheaply made and low end Beyerdynamic open backed portable headphones. I suspect that a pair of Koss KSC75, or even the IEMs that come with a decent smartphone, would make the old Sony pro headphones seem very poor indeed. I'm happy still using amps, radios, portable players etc. from long ago but headphones were terrible compared to modern stuff.

Reading the last few posts reminded me I also have an old Sony CD player. It is very nice but these days I rip everything to flac and my CDs don't get played so the ancient CDP-##? lives in a box and is no longer hooked up. I moved house in December and I did check it out when I unpacked at the new place and I thought it sounded great, but one disc at a time? Not controllable from my smartphone? No metadata? Hmmm. So it lives in a box and in its place connected to my ancient Yamaha amp is an Eee PC with USB DAC working as MPD client and UPnP renderer.

 

i have a similar memory, but I was very much not into headphones at home, in those days... I hadn't discovered the pleases of a good open-back set, lacking the claustrophobic feeling that had put me off them for so many years.

I did plug the Sony's in. occasionally, for late-night listening. All I remember is that they sound a lot better than my modest commuting in-ear stuff.

 

Technically, I still own a pair of Yamaha speakers, don't remember which ones, that I bought in 1999. My best friend and former roommate still has them in his living room, but still keeps asking when I want them back.

Stuff I use…Audeze LCD2 Revision 1 that still work perfectly. Missed the boat on pre-fazor revision 2 and am convinced these are the two worth owning for their price.