Yaqin MC10L
I received this amp yesterday from Hong Kong. You can get it from ebay
at around $500 ~ $600.
It arrived safe. First relief.
I tested it in my friends house who has Klipsh Lascla speakers and Sota
Comet turntable with Shure 97 cartridge. He has Dynaco STxx tube amp
(separates), Bellari tube phono stage, and Jolida tube CD player.
At first plugin, there was a power and sound. Another relief.
We first listened to some CDs - Dumky trio (Dvorak), Bach solo violoin,
Yama****a playing Bach cello suite, Tchaikovsky Symphony #5, and Sumi
Jo Opera.
My first impression was that the sound is a bit harshy and not so
dynamic. Also, I did not feel a full stereo sound either. My friend
told me not to worry too much since it would take some time to settle
in.
My friend, who has spent much time and money on
amps/turntable/speakers/cds/LPs, really like the look and its build
quality. For $560 (what I paid), I can't get a 50W tube amp like this
in US or Europe, he told me.
But I was still not quite thrilled with the sound. Then we went for
LPs.
First, LA four's Nouveau Bach. A lot difference. The sound was much
smooth and the imaging/balance was much better than any of those CDs.
Few other Bachs were also very good. My friend told me that it is not
surprising to see a tube amp works better with LPs.
Then, we listened to Santana's Black Magic woman. This sounded like a
crap on my system -- Rotel turntable, Grado Black cartridge, Yamaha
RXV3000 recviver, and Klipsh KLF-20. With high volume, all I heard on
my system was just a noise.
But, it sounds so detailed and lively on my friend's system. With full
volume (12 O'clock on 50W amp with 104dB speakers), it was not noisy at
all. I just fell like that I was in Santana live concert.
Overall, I would say that matching this amp with right
speaker/turntable/CD player is the most important one, but I still
wonderhow come there were so much differences of sound between CDs and
LPs. Maybe his Sota table and Shure cartridge is a much better source
than the Jolida CD player.
To sum up, $560 was well spent. All tubes (4 x EL34, and another
unidentified smaller 4 tubes) are made in China. If I can pull out
another $200 or so, I may try to replace all tubes with Mullards.
The manual that came with this amp is all in Chinse and it does not
seem to explain any about the tubes. My friends and I have no ideas of
the front 4 tubes which are roughly half the size of EL34.
If you google search on Yaqin MC10L, you will get some pics, but still
no info on those smaller tubes.
I wonder whether any of you experts can tell me what they are.
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