Used gear can be a great addition to your studio, but it can also have the potential to be a world of nightmares. The fact is that it is really just impossible to know before purchase, sometimes even until years later.
No Warranty from Apogee on Used Gear!
Used gear does not have a Warranty, so always keep this in mind. The price can seem like a great deal, only to find later when you add costs of repairs it is no longer. Also, very old Obsolete gear may not be repairable at all, due to lack of original parts.
Also, even if the seller tells you the product is in perfect working order this may not be true. It is entirely possible they are being 100% honest in what they believe, not trying to scam you. But it is very easy for the average person who doesn't inspect the unit internally to make a mistake.
Liquid Damage
There is a common misconception that if you spill liquid on your electronics, and let it dry or put it in rice, and it then seems fine, that no harm was done. This could not be farther from the truth!
This is because one of the main dangers of liquid damage is not the initial spill, or shorts, but corrosion over time.
You could have a little spill, think nothing of it, everything continues to work normally and then three years later the unit goes down "seemingly" out of nowhere, but it is actually because the board has completely corroded in that time.
As an example, here is a photo of Duet unit that was sent in for a normal repair, with no expectation of liquid damage. As far as the customer knew it was never spilled on, just that one day phantom power stopped working.
As you can see this is such severe corrosion that there is no way to desolder all the faulty parts and continue to reuse this main board. A whole new Main Board would be needed. If this happens with Legacy/Obsolete units where we just don't have that model of Main Board anymore, then it is unrepairable, e-waste.
Since the fault the customer observed in this case was that Phantom Power didn't work you can understand how easily someone who simply didn't own a condenser microphone could have tested this unit by trying to use it, thought it was fine, and sold it as "working" when it was in fact damaged beyond repair.
So always be cautious with any Used gear! A seller may not know what lurks inside the unit.
If you want to get a better deal versus New Gear please look at our Factory Refurbished units in our webstore. These are products where our Repair Lab has internally inspected all boards, and tested every single function, using specialized testing equipment. They also have the same 1 year Warranty as a New unit.
https://apogeedigital.com/store