Although I was a bit player in this drama, I sure am enjoying the show as a member of the audience. I would have to pay $5.99 and find a good movie on my satellite provider to get this much entertainment. The appearance of modders in the last ten years or so makes sense when you think you could buy a $5000 turntable and keep it for your whole life. I plan on keeping my McIntosh MR78 tuner forever. However, in the world of digital haze, you can spend $50,000 and that money is "lost" when the new model comes out six months later. I remember spending $25000 on an SGI Indigo 2 computer as part of software development on the unix platform. Today these machines can be had for $$25.00. One of the recent posts suggested that upgrading "vintage equipment" might make sense. In the digital universe, anything 2 years old or more might as well be 20 years old. One last thing: good tweaks are often expensive. I beta tested the $4200 Bybee Golden Goddess speaker bullets and found them to be terrific: would I spend four grand for them? Maybe, if I were Kobe Bryant getting $60,000,000. Look at the low original prices of the old Marantz and McIntosh equipment from the 60's: this stuff is still musical, and with a little modding, competitive. As part of my park, I have a computer museum (site is online), and I have been constantly amazed how the old computers seemed to be built to work for decades, which made refurbishing them a snap. We are now living in a disposable culture, and even in the world of high end audio it is OK to design a $100,000 boat anchor.