Oh no! Another silly MIC thread.
The anti MIC's must have a special USA made keyboard computer setup to type their nonsense.
Let's see how long this one lasts.
China built tube amps
Well I had an interesting conversation today. I contacted a large dealer and let him know I would like to buy a certain integrated tube amplifier that is made in China. I was told he wouldn't sell me one. He said they are all junk. Prima Luna, Line Magnetic, Cayin, etc, etc, he said forget it. If you want a tube amplifier buy an American or European built unit that can be serviced.
So, I am new to valve amplifiers and I want to try one to understand what they're all about and sort of get my feet wet with tube rolling etc. I don't want to spend a lot of money at first which is why I was looking at Chinese built integrateds. So my question is, without getting into any particular brand other than what I have already mentioned, what is your experience with Chinese built tube amps? As a whole are they reliable? Am I wasting my money if I buy one according to this dealer? I have to admit I was rather taken aback by how adamant he was. Thoughts anyone?
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If you get a Chinese amp that is sold by a US dealer you should be fine. I would avoid the cheaper Chinese tube amps that only seem to be available on Amazon or eBay. There is a reason they don't have dealer support! We avoid Chinese parts in our equipment for reliability reasons, the exception being the tubes. The Chinese small signal tubes have been pretty good for us, the power tubes not so much- for them we use Russian made tubes. Oddly, the Russian small signal tubes don't seem to be that good IMO. The Chinese factory producing 6SN7s burned down a couple of years ago so they've gotten hard to get. This issue is a bit prickly for me. For example if you are looking to repair a vintage audio piece that uses semiconductors, eBay has become a bad place to look for replacements because its flooded with Chinese knockoffs that won't meet spec and will likely fail if you try to install them. My personal concerns are how are the people treated that make the parts and the equipment? I do not know how much is real or imagined on my part. But there are companies that seem to do good work- Topping is one of them; they make extremely well engineered digital gear that is also at commodity prices- compact, reliable and also sound good. |
lack of stateside service and support is a real concern, as ralph points out some china based vendors help solve this by offering free shipping back to location x where they do the servicing, and that can help some some others reach a scale of sales in the usa or europe that they do set up a least a local repair facility, of course the lowest cost new entrants rarely have this sorted out that said, tube amps are -- usually pretty big and heavy, so any need for service or repair gets to be a bit of pain, and if the process requires a trip to china, it won't be by rapid courier, so prospective buyers like the op are well advised to think through these tradeoffs -- not terribly complicated and circuitry is straightforward, so a local tech who works on tube amps can probably do the work |
+1 for CAYIN. this gave me confidence to try one, very glad I did. https://6moons.com/audioreviews/cayin/a88t.html you do want to consider where you will get support, I'm lucky to be 35 minutes away from VAS.
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