Who comes up with this stuff, imaginations gone wild. What knot is on YOUR cord?

I am lucky enough to work as an engineer for a noise and vibration control company, mostly for aerospace issues. I work mainly in the vibration damping sector, but I have brought home with me a pretty cool little device to measure the acoustics of my listening room. Its a nifty little four channel front end analyzer from Squadriga and a Binaural Headset for Sound Pressure Readings.

Still playable, how come these guys at Acoustech say it's CRAP, they re did them to bring them up to modern hi fi standards..READ.... You really ain't listening to old crap 78's are ya, playable or not, useless... http://www.stereophile.com/features/408rti/index1.html

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b321/jombres/musicstudiocartoon.jpg?t=1210636497

Has anybody heard these speaker cables yet? They're supposed to be a direct competitor to the Nordost Odin, I tried to get them from my local dealer, but apparently Stereovox has large backorder log.

I have a NAD 1130 stereo preamp for my system.
The power amp is an Adcom GFA-555.
While trying to install a rack mount tray for the NAD, it stopped working.
I tried to take the NAD to repair shops, but they charge a 50$ non-refundable fee, and say that they most likely won't be able to fix it because the unit is so outdated.

I need a good quality pre-amp, but don't want to spend more than 200$ on one. I'm fine with "vintage" pre-amps.