[Patrick Turner]

jaap wrote:

Recently I bought a new pair of Shuguang 2A3 tubes from an Ebay shop in
China. Arrived in good shape, thanks to careful handling of the post,
not because of decent packaging. Put them up for a test in the old AVO
mk IV to be sure they survived the bumpy ride. One measured at half the
original RCA specs, the other even at ten percent less.

Anyone with the same or different experience with these cheap Chinese
tubes? All together they don't come that cheap, compared to old USA
production which test normally well beyond rejection.

FWIW, the seller does not respond to my complaint. It might be because
of the language barrier, or he might know what he's selling.


He he, the chinee boy he know how to make de dolla dolla!

Dat all he know.

You buy toobee from chinee boy, you need rubish bin soon.

All the tubes they make regardless of quality are sold.

So you need to buy 4 to get 2 good ones, luck permitting.

I have steered clear of chinese tubes and tube amps and
last year have had to completly re-engineer the attrocious amplifiers
some asian makers are flogging to the gullible public.
People see these cheap deals splashed around the web, and send off
$700 to HongKong Hi-Fi or other companies
which should be named ( Bung-Junk inc,) and they get a few weeks of
listening
and then the smoke sets it.

The quality is utter crap throughout, and the fuctards selling this crap
are in an economy where workers get paid $2 per day, and may be quite
illiterate.
$700 is like a huge windfall, if it costs $100 to make an amp, and you
get
$600 profit. And such direct dealing of rubbish from the east
for money from the west is what constitutes successful business.

But owners of chinese amps become dissolusioned, angry about the early
failures,
and the complete lack of after sales service, and get the wrong idea
about tube amps.

Of course not all asian made electronics is always this bad. There is
Jolida, Ming-Da,
and Consonance, better than the rest. But that all costs much more than
$700 for 80 watts
in two channels.

After 50 years of compulsory communism, the chinese have no scruples
about
ripping off anyone with more money than they have.
I doubt the left hand knows what the right hand is doing in china much
of the time.

Give them 20 years, maybe they'll wake up.

It takes real brains to make tubed audio amps and tubes.
Trouble is the old retro technology has to compete with
modernity's solid horror story, which is dirt cheap to make.

So those attracted to tube amps construction are often short of the full
brain required,
or truly desperate entrepreneurs,
judging by what I have seen in the schematics and designs coming out of
asia by the boat load.

Patrick Turner.