Very generous of you Leggit!
Longest-kept would be my Wharfedale Denton speakers, in walnut, which I bought sometime around 1968. My first tentative footstep into hifi. Fed by Sinclair pre- and power-amp (well, for a little while by a couple of valve radiosâŚ)
Shortest would be Naim NAP300 (non DR), which I fairly quickly (2-3 months?) changed to NAP500. Bought both pre-loved (I hate that expression, for some obscure reason), but didnât lose anything on the NAP300, thanks to Naim kit keeping its price quite well (or even in the case of a NAP120 and NAC 22 and a Nait 1) going up in value.
Shortest: A DAB tuner for three days. And that was only because the shop I bought it from was shut on Sundays and Mondays.
Longest: A pair of Chartwell LS3/5as. Eighteen years. Should never have sold them on. Ended up attempting to atone for my mistake by buying a pair of Stirling Broadcast ones. Obviously they werenât as good. Oh well. A hard lesson.
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Shortest, Nait 5, exchanged for Rega Cursa/Maia after a month.
Longest in use, NAD 4020A tuner since 1981 and still going.
Longest held on to, is my mission 700s, bought in 1980, one new tweeter in 1987 and two new bass drivers in mid 90s but retired the second time the bass surrounds crumbled about 5 years ago, not yet thrown out though.
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Shortest was a Stageline, ended up staying with my Prefix
Longest is an A R Cambridge A60 integrated amplifier I bought in 1982 which was used until about 1997/8 by me and then for a couple of years by my wifeâs youngest son. I keep in in the hope that one day I might be able to set it up in a second system
Shortest - Linn Intek. Think I kept about a month, then swapped it for a Naim 62/140 - a bit of a difference, the Intek was dreadful.
Longest - Rega Ela MK1 (fluted front). Bought twenty five years ago and used with numerous amps and sources. Now as L&R in an AV system with Kytes as rears and a R-Vox centre speaker. The Ela are such good value of you can find a pair in good condition. Still rate them.
Shortest - NAC62 bought in 1988 and replaced by a NAC72 in 1989.
Longest - NAP135s bought in 1989 ( second hand and bought having been resleeved to Olive in Salisbury), playing Wish You Were Here as I type.
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Longest serving are my B&W DM4s which date, as best I can remember, from 1979. They have had a chequered history having served as bedside tables for many years and are not looking pristine. Recently resurrected after moving my Nova into the living room; they are each sitting on a bit of wood on the floor in the corner of the room on either side of a desk. They should sound dreadful in such an appalling situation but actually sound superb. And much better than when I used them with the Nova on stands in my office before getting the ATC SCM 19s. It has, to be honest, come as a bit of a surprise and slightly making me wonder why I spent all this money on an SN3 and NDX2 in the other room! 
And that is only slightly tongue in cheek. It does show the importance of speaker placement and support and also, as I have always thought, just how good the Nova is.
The shortest is easy although I am pushing the definition of âaudio equipmentâ a bit far. It was a record deck, amp and speakers package from a department store (I forget which one) in about 1974 when I was young and naive. Truly dreadful; the music was badly reproduced and drowned by the hiss from the speakers. Kept it for less than a week and returned it for a full refund.
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The shortest: Naim Nac 62/ Nap 140 ( 1 year)
The longest : Naim Nac 552 ( nearly 18 years)
I actually tend to keep stuff for a long time, as I never jump for the hell of it. As an example it took me 18 months to create a suitable home for my much loved Fact 12s. ( Extensive room treatment as I simply couldnât let them go!) 
ATB Peter
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I have pair of Ela Mk1s on my kitchen/dinning room system, didnât get them new, they were a couple of years old when I got them in the late 90s and are still going strong. Lovely speakers and despite being bigger than I would like, I havenât been able to part with them and get something smaller.
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Some of the examples of longest have not been in use all that time, or relegated to a second system etc. It would be interesting to know as the longest in service in the main system.
In my case the answer is the same, IMF RSPM speakers for 26 years. And at that point they were about 3
Some people have mentioned repairs or improvements, in my case I had to replace a bass driver in one when they were about 37 or 38 years old, blown by an amp fault, recapped the crossover at about 42 years old, and replaced the supertweeters at about the same time when doing room setup testing with REW and found one of them had a fault (not audible to me - but IIRC it was at something like 16KHz. I suppose I neednât have bothered as I was the only one who actually listens through the system!)
A good point.
My LP12 has been in use since I got it and whilst I do not use it every day it does still get regular use.
I think one of the many good things about the LP12 is that it has always been possible to update it as Linn has introduced upgrades assuming funds allow and the desire to do so is there.
Longest = Bolt together NAP250.
In fact this WAS a 160 which had been converted. Now retained as my emergency power amp in case the 300DR fails or needs a service, in a year or ten.
I have not had anything for a phenomenally short time. My first âproperâ HiFi Amp was a Sanyo that I bought in Tokyo as an end of season sale and bought back on the plane, together with a Technics DD TT. I sold it one after a year.
Think mine are my speakers A&R 94 but they are a bit like triggers brush had them since the 90s
Naim Nait purchased in 1988 and still a member of the family.
Shortest was KEF LS50 which I owned for ~ 4 months and most of that time on loan to friends. Knew within first few notes that they were gonersâŚ
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Longest time period held onto audio components are in my âMan-CaveââŚMcIntosh C100 PreAmp/Controller, MC352 Amp and B&W Nautilus 802sâŚ32 years and still going strong since 1989; with incredible soundâŚI have added and swapped out different sources over the yearsâŚprimarily SACD players. Only âthingsâ Iâve held onto longer are my wife and kidsâŚ
In another system â I had a Naim NAC250 Amp for about 2 monthsâŚswapped it out for the 300DR
cheersâŚ
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Youâre the first person I have seen on this forum who has a Cotter front end. We only sold two here in sunny Perth, and one of those was to a fellow staff member. I had the step up transformer feeding my 32 pre, would have bought the whole thing in a heatbeat if I had had the dosh at the time.
I did have it on extended home demo, (to myself, I had a really wonderfully indulgent boss), it was as that time, 1985ish, the best preamp we had.
I had the CM-2 Control Module, two transformers and the power supply but not the cabinet. List price was about $3,200. I paid $900 used.
I sold it when the power supply got noisy. That would be worth some money now, especially the phono transformer.
The step up transformer is pretty expensive. You see them going on various websites $2000-3000 AUD. It was originally called Verion, then Mitchell A Cotter went his own way and finally I think Bryston made them under licence after Cotter closed up shop. I think I paid around $400 AUD staff price for a Mitch A Cotter variant in the early 80âs, (we were also the Australian importers). When the Phono stage, CM-2, and Line filter came out, I think the whole thing here was around $7000 AUD retail. It looked great, three little blue bricks, the brutalist CM-2 all lined up.
I sold one to a guy with Stax Class A monoblocks feeding Isobariks. My fellow staff member had a NAP 250 feeding Linn SARAs (I think). I was running active Isobariks.
My front end was an LP12-Dynavector-Koetsu Onyx. Looking at current prices, and even used makes me weep.
At the time I bought it, Roksan had neither an arm nor a cartridge, so I bought the Xerxes with a Rega RB300 and an Audio Technica F5. I had every intention of this being a long term purchase. However, this was my very first experience of auditioning and buying my own hi-fi, and I made (at least) two mistakes:
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I failed to acknowledge to myself that, notwithstanding my preference for a turntable that didnât need regular maintenance (the Roksan), I preferred the sound of the Linn. My rationalisation at the time was that, since both turntables were vastly better than any I had ever heard before, I would surely be more than happy with either.
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I did most of my auditioning through Epos ES14 speakers, since they were what was set up in the dem room. After deciding on the source and the amplification, I thought âwell, much as I like these speakers, theyâre not practical for me, since theyâre a little larger than I want, and theyâre designed to sit a couple of feet from the wall.â Having explained my restrictions and preferences to the dealer, he suggested Linn Kans, which I had heard nothing but good about. I gave them a brief audition, but I think my critical faculties were a bit jaded by this point. I do recall that I wasnât blown away by them.
Anyway, after getting the system up and running, and even allowing some time for everything to settle down, I could not get along with it. The sound was thin, bright, hard, and fatiguing. After trying this and that, I pretty much stopped listening to music altogether for a while. I finally admitted to myself that Iâd made a sharp wrong turn straight out of the gate, and traded the Roksan in for an LP12 a few months later.
That was a big improvement, and I started listening to music again. I wish I could say it brought me complete contentment, but the feeling of being âjust one more upgradeâ away from audio nirvana has persisted to this day. But that could be the subject of an entire thread (and my apologies for the verbose thread derailment).
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