$560 for a used Budgie??

A used Parks Audio Budgie just went for $560 on eBay. There were 16 bids and the seller has a zero for feedback. What am I missing here? Is it that good or are people just reacting to the fact that the new phono stage is so different? Wishing I bought all the used ones I saw in the $300 range only a few short months ago!

 

You must own a bunch of turntables to want all of those phono preamps.

 

No, it's called flipping them for profit!

 

It'll be a one of, I wouldn't sweat about it.

 

Time to sell my budgie apparently???

 

I think the Budgie is headed for tube gear cult status. That opinion notwithstanding, they do sound really good. It's not super refined, but it makes vinyl sound the way most people "think" vinyl should. I'm sure that comment isn't gonna make sense to many. It's a debatable point.

But I don't think that price is a one off. I believe that's gonna be the general price point moving forward. I already have mine so I'm good, lol. The new Parks stage probably sounds good too, but it's really complicated...

 

Yes, it's really good.

 

I saw that too. I would only sell mine for a Budgie Hybrid, but I don't see those selling at all. I asked Shannon if I could upgrade my original Budgie with higher gain and he said no.

 

I was one of the losing bidders on that auction. It went way above where I thought it would go. I think that outside of eBay that the price will stay somewhat reasonable or at least around retail. At least that is what I keep telling myself.

I'm hoping that I find one here or over at bartertown sometime soon. I posted a wanted to buy and got no bites, so I sit and wait. Somewhat patiently.

 

The Budgie was certainly a good product for the price, but there are other comparable low cost tube phono preamps that aren't from China. Most of them are a little above the Budgie's price because they have more robust (and costly) analog power supplies instead of the Budgie's wall wart and DC-DC convertor circuitry. But not meaning to dissuade you from your waiting game, the Budgie is obviously gonna be a good buy if you can get one for a good price with all the demand (and there have been a few advertised lately on the big sites for for $300 to $350, but they went very quickly), but just thought I'd toss that out, the tube phono preamp market is pretty hot now and there's quite a few small companies with good looking products out there, and some in that same price range as the Budgie.

 

Why do you feel like you need more gain? The Budgie has way more gain than the Pro-Ject tube box that it replaced. But that Pro-Ject was the first one they ever built i.e. old...

 

Thanks @Davey. PM me some further thoughts?

 

Yeah, I think the Budgie was a winner because it was a great product at its price point. While it was in production, people didn't need to really look around, because the word was it was the one to get. Now that its gone, people may find stuff that's as good or better.

 

Exactly, and some of that talk has started around here, some very interesting products have been discussed in the last few weeks here.

 

I just have to turn my volume up about 20db higher than any other source on my receiver. I would also like the lowest signal to noise ratio possible when ripping vinyl.

 

Well, I hope it's not a move that comes back to haunt Shannon Parks. I mean, from a business standpoint, what he did makes no sense to me. If everyone seems to be talking about your product, and it has around 52, 5-star Amazon reviews and NO review less than 5-stars I can't see why you would stop building it.

So now you've got people looking around at other stuff to fill a void that you purposefully left, at the same time you are introducing a different product. But your different product isn't really what people are looking for at the time... That may change, but now people's eyes are glancing in different directions.

I dunno...

 

Yeah, I'm not sure who the market for a Puffin is beyond needledroppers. I might want one if I didn't already have Universal Audio AD/DA converters. There aren't any tube phono preamps under a grand that are as good as the Budgie. Seems strange to just discontinue it.

 

Well, we don't know how successful the Budgie (and hybrid) was from a business standpoint, it was certainly popular, but if you aren't making enough profit to grow the company and take good care of your family, then maybe it makes more sense to develop a product with a better profit margin, and less assembly time, even if not as popular. Just guessing, but I can't imagine he was getting rich building the Budgie.

 

Very good point!

 

I would pass on the budgie. For the same $$ or less, you can get a Jolida JD-9. Tube based as well, and the capacitance can be configured for just about any cart known to man.

 

The Jolida is almost twice the price of a Budgie even if you could find one, so now it's just apples and oranges. It may be better, but if you just plan to spend money, there's stuff that's better than the Jolida...

 

This.

I'd like to stay in the $400 window that the Budgie was occupying not jump to $775. I also plan on keeping my Denon DL-103R / AU-305 SUT combination, so do not need a ton of options for loading. I'm open to ideas in the sub $500 range.

 

I would buy one now. Mine's already worth $150 more than I paid for it. They might go up, but even if they don't you won't lose money.

 

I'll continue to look for one while I think about other options. If you decide to part with yours, PM me.

 

If I can find a Budgie Hybrid I will.