David Yee Tube amps?

greetings: i am in the same boat. does anyone have experience with davidyee tube amps?

thanks! -andre

Are you are talking about the inexpensive Canadian amps that are often listed on eBay? I have seen the listings and almost pulled the trigger more than once, just out of curiosity. But an acquaintance of mine bought one and claims it was a cheap piece of crap. He mostly complained about the build quality and noisy circuits. I never saw it, so I cannot verify his story. But for the price these things go for you might just take a chance.

thanks. i took the chance on a rebuilt acrosound 20-20. there is a return period, so at least on paper the man stands behind his work. i will try to post impressions here after it arrives.

Hi, any feedback on the David Yee amps? I am pondering on one as well. Your insights very much appreciated.

I know David Yee personally, He has built a headphone amp, a guitar amp, and a small el 84 amp for me. For the price, I can't honestly think of anything, especially custom made, that can touch it.
He built himself a higher end el84 amp that compares favorable to my Almarro a205mkII, FWIW.
Cons, the build quality and appearance ain't exactly stunning, cheap pots, jacks, etc... but for the price, If you want to get into tubes, it's a no brainer. period

any body know anything about his tube buffer

David was my previous landlord in Vancouver. I ended up buying a pre-amp, amp and tube buffer from him. $400 each.
He gave me five amps to try out at my apartment. I picked the one I liked best and David agreed.
The sound is magnificant.
You don't have money spent on frills such as cases
Max sound for min dollars. One volume knob went bad after three years and he replaced it no charge while I waited!. The tube buffer made a tremendous improvement. Impedence matching was the reason given.
I have never had any problems. Seems to be a straightforward Hong Kong guy (genius?) that speaks English poorly.
email me if you want more details. I see him slagged here and I just want to mention that all my interactions with him have been good and I am still a repeat customer.

Yes, I have one and I agree totally with Steamboy. Actually, I first had him repair a good solid state amplifier. After he repaired it, he hooked it up to some Tannoy silver speakers which he rebuilt and are magnificent. It was like being in a mad scientist’s laboratory. Sure enough, my 150 watts per channel amp sounded fantastic. At that point however he took the same source and hooked it up to his little preamp which was only about 15 watts per channel. I thought mine was pretty fantastic however his sounded much better immediately.

My brother in law was in the market for a new system but I insisted that he visit David first. After listening to David’s system for 5 minutes, he asked him to build a system for him. Sure enough, it sounded fantastic to the point where I moved my system to my office and had David build a system for me.

Because it was a complete rebuild to my brother in law’s specifications, my brother in law encountered a few problems. He and I visited David and he sometimes would make modifications in front of us which showed just how smart he really is. Other times, he would take a few days but he never complained or whined about having to do it and never argued that it needed tweaking. On the other hand, my purchase was a little more sophisticated and accepted more inputs and the like.

The sound has incredible detail and people tell me they can hear things that they just cannot hear on their systems. I listen to primarily opera, more and more classical and jazz (since I purchased the system), a lot of female vocals and some rock. His amp and preamp cost less than $2000 Canadian (about 80%).

Since then he’s helped us get new (to us) vintage equipment which you would have to pay thousands of dollars for to get equipment of the same quality.

People come to my house and tell me that my system sounds magnificent. It sounds like the person is standing right in front of me (them) and there is both incredible detail and depth. At the same time, I do have a great set of Vandersteens so my speakers are really good. Still, he tells me I should get a set of Tannoy’s which I’ll wait to do as I recently purchased a set of Thiels so I’d like to take them for a spin first.

If my house burned down tomorrow, I’d buy another one of his units in a second.  Oh, and his aesthetics have improved dramatically so they now look professional although it increases the cost somewhat.

I should  have said David's aesthetics are improving so they look more professional than they had. For instance he now sprays his boards with automotive paint and has made the wooden boxes surrounding his ams and preamps more aesthetically pleasing.  

Still, as I wrote earlier, most importantly, the sound is fantastic and I'd have had to spend thousands more to achieve the same sound quality.  It drives my Vandersteen 2CE easily but they are pretty efficient speakers.  He came over to my house and was worried that the amplifier would not drive the Vandersteens.  I understand that the Thiel 2 2 are less efficient however I will not be picking them up until after the pandemic has settled down as they're just too heavy to ship so I cannot say at this point that they work well with the Thiels as I have yet to pair them with the system.