[Tom Alaerts]

Hi

I have the impression that you should adjust your budget upwards if you
want to buy a good chinese tube amp. I mean, if you pay little but the
quality is not there then why bother? Then you just threw money away.

Myself, I don't know yet what to do next month: my work will bring me
to hong kong and a local colleague / tube fanatic wants to show me a
few interesting shops there. Two very different approaches tempt me:

1. buy 4 NOS tubes, perhaps also a nice case and build the popular
Aikido preamp. A propos: did anyone here make it? It's obvious that the
John Brodskie from tubecad.com is knowledgeable and I am also curious
what the knowledgeable people here think about the Aikido design. This
would be my first tube-based DIY project. I would go for an Aikido
version with low-voltage tubes, which makes me feel more comfortable
for a first project. I am curious about this design as a first project
since it shouldn't be too expensive (no output transformers). And it
gets good comments. I admit that I don't understand how it works.
Meanwhile I read up on basic tube theory but this design is beyond my
current knowledge.

2. I could of course simply buy an amp there. Now the Melody SP3 is
very well received. It also looks good and it is well made. According
to my colleague, in Hong Kong it should cost the equivalent of approx
550 EUR. Even with some import duty added it will still be very
reasonable. And half of what it costs in France. Yes I know that if it
fails I have to try and repair it myself. However for the price I am
prepared to take the risk. If you search for pictures and reviews you
will see it isn't a cheap and nasty thing. Did anyone of this group
hear it yet?

Tom

eponymous cowherd wrote:
I am a non-tuber thinking about becoming a tuber. What intrigues me the
most is that tubes are described as being non-fatigueing. I suspect that
my NAD 7225/KEF C30/cheap DVD player combination is fatigueing me,
though I have nothing to compare it to. I just know that I love my +100
CD collection, keep buying new CDs and just can't listen to music for
very long. Its not the music, because I love it. So I am thinking about
buying a tube amp and seeing if that's less fatigueing. But I don't have
a lot of money to spend, as you might have guessed from the age of my
components, and I don't have a lot of money to spend on what might end
up being a failed experiment. So I am thinking about buying one of those
$200 chinese tube amps from ebay and giving it a go.

I am not asking if these amps are good, I'm sure that there are armies
of ppl on the usenet waiting to lecture me as to the shortcomings of
inexpensive chinese products. I just want to know if these amps are good
enough to let me know if I was born a tuber or not. That's all.