I'm also wondering if the prior owner of my Ref 6 (that guy whitecamaross, famous for going through hundreds of amps and writing about them on audiogon) rang up a lot of those initial 520 hours idling, rather than sending signal through. He couldn't have possibly put on that much listening time with all the gear swapping. The Ref 6 I bought from him was (I believe) his 2nd, and then he got another one after that. And then later a Ref 10 - plus countless other brand preamps. Crazy! Personally I don't see how much meaningful information can be compiled when everything is changing, all the time.
Either way, I've now piled on the requisite hours myself, a few times over, and life is very, very good
And once again, thank you Steve for not buying this off of me
