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Pay $350,000 for an amplifier?!?!! Michael Fremer takes a deep breath and plugs in the Wavac SH-833 monoblock power amplifier in order to hear for himself what he might get if he traded in his house. "When tmh's Jim Ricketts asked me if I wanted to review this eight-box assemblage," says MF, "the first thing I did was laugh at the ludicrousness of the situation. Then I said, 'Why the hell not?'"

Next, we have John Atkinson's "As We See It" from the July 2004 issue, Absolute Values. JA struggles with the decision to run the $350k Wavac review: "What possibly needs to be said about an amplifier that costs as much as a house? That weighs half a ton? That perhaps only 10 people in the world will buy?"

Art Dudley's latest column, Listening #19, becomes radio-active. AD comments, "The [Tivoli] Model One isn't just a cheap toy that surprised everyone by turning out okay. It's the Rega tonearm of table radios"

Finally, we have Stereophile's Recording of July 2004, Chris Stamey: Travels In the South. Robert Baird notes, "If anyone is qualified to try to assemble an album of alt-rock/power pop, it is one Chris Stamey."