Thinking of dubious badge engineering activities reminded me of this…
I had a pair of these years ago, early/mid noughties. There was a load of fizz flying around that ‘Red Wine Audio’ (I think?) allegedly owned by Mark Levinson was selling these in New York for US$6,000 each
I bought mine for about HK$7,000 (US$903) each.
Built like a tank and with my Tact 2.2x as the pre-amp they worked very well. Red Wine (assuming I got that right) had to go public and agree that theirs was the same item - but that they made lots of changes in order to justify the extra price
What the changes were, I don’t recall, but they were not easy to spot with the lid off!
Nothing new under the sun, as they say…