Chinese valve amps

Are these Cinese valve amps any good?
I'm temped to buy one of the single ended amps.

Form the pictures I've seen they appear to be well constructed.
My worry is actual build quality and reliability. Also, customer support should anything go wrong with it.

Please advise your experiences, good or bad with them.

Cheers
Mike

 

Hi Mike

At under £300 a chinese amp from Ebay is your only option if you want a new valve amp.

I'm a ''dyed in the wool'' valve man, and if I only had £300 to spend on an amp, I'd buy solid state for that price.

Think of a valve amp costing under £300 like a brand new car costing under £4,000....

how much can you stretch to?

£500+ will open options considerably.

 

Hi Mike,

Chinese amps can be very good. Companies like Icon Audio & Puressound have amps that are made in China. These are built to their specs with better components added. Buying off Ebay can be pot luck with amps from China.

You don't say how much you want to spend? If you like a gamble then that is up to you. I have heard of poor quality items and good quality stuff coming from China.

If the amp is new and dirt cheap, it may not be that good. Valve amps need good transformers and power supplies. These can cost money. Dirt cheap new valve amps may struggle to have these.

As Chris says, £500+ your options are much better.

SCIDB

 

So much of a valve amplifier's performance is governed by the quality of the output transformers that super-budget valve amps will inevitably be very compromised.
Good transformer are not cheap.

I've tried a few cheap as chips valve amps and they've varied from downright dangerous to appallingly bad in terms of performance.

I'd agree with Dean, Icon and Puresound are where good quality budget amps (and beyond) start. I'd add World Designs if you can DIY.

 

Valve amps are incredibly simple to build, all you need to be able to do is follow a simple circuit diagram and hardwire solder. But if you build your own you will find the cost of the components will exceed the cost of a Chinese amp finished, especially the cost of the chassis. So my recomendation is buy the Chinese amp and use it as doner amp for your own project, that is all Puresound and the others did, and then they decided to make businesses out of it and mutiply the price by three or four times to sell through UK retailers.

 

Hi Richard

You should see inside some of these Ebay £100-£300 valve amps. I know you believe 'dont use 2 components when 1 will do the job' - they believe dont use 1 component when you can use 35!..

They make poor donor boxes (many do anyway), because they are as stuffed full of parts as a box of quality street.

The transformer cases have more potting compound than transformer, and the box itself as I say is just crammed with circuit boards and parts.

For those that can solder, a nice easy single ended valve amp will sound good and be easy to make.

diyhifisupply (hong kong)
world audio design (uk)
hificollective (uk)

This is more money, but much easier and would be less of a pigs ear..

 

Thanks for info.

FYI I was looking at the Separo KT88 single ended amp. It is listed at £295.
Another thing I have noticed about all Cinese amps is that they have very few inputs and no tape loop. Is there a reason for this?

 

Cost probably, though tape loops aren't so common these days.

 

In response to cheap SE valve amps, I have a chinese 2A3 SE amp up for sale on this forum and on Wigwam, which might be worth a look if 3.5 watts is enough power for your speakers. I agree with the sentiments mentioned of you "pay's for what you gets". The amp i am selling is limited by the OPT's. I was going to change the OPT's on this amp to either James or Electroprint ones which cost about £200 delivered ( not including customs duty - if your unlucky!!). Which would take it to another level, which for less than £400 is good value.
Some may say that chinese amps use poor circuit design. They use the same 1960's and earlier circuits that the majority of amps use. Modern circuits using HT regulation, SSRP etc, are in another price bracket, unless your into DIY.

 

You could try miking your amp and running it through a high output PA system, say 100-150 watts. Otherwise you will have to buy a larger valve amp plus pedals.

 

Chinese Amps

I have a Chinese made Separo P88i amp (ultrlinear, push-pull) ; (24kg !)
Speakers are 6 Ohm Sonor audio that sound great on the 4 Ohm setting, bit flat on the 8 Ohm setting.
You can set the grid (g1) bias with trim-pots accessed on the side of the amp.
Set between 450-500 mV NOT higher, you Will cook your KT88's ( I did!)
Looked inside the amp, beautifully made - you could replace components for more expensive ones, but that's what you get for the price.
Generally, amp sounds very good, own the amp for 4 yrs.
Hope this helps.
You can't build this amp for cheaper, unless you make your own output & power transformers. Even then, it's close to cost.

 

I bought a Yarland Pro 200 SE, 300B single ended valve amplifier back in 2006 and it lasted for two years. On opening up the amp and getting a friend to look at it we found all of the internal voltages to be all over the place and blue flashover in the 300B's on switch on. The amplifier was a disaster and a complete waste of 350 quid.

 

http://www.cattylink.com/

I knew some people were satisfied with their service.

Check out Ming Da MC34-AB (http://www.cattylink.com/page311.html), triode power 40wpc, should be enough to power most loudspeakers...

 

these chinese amps look worse value to me in 2010, with the poor state of the pound.

1000 us dollars for that one, approx 30 percent extra when you add import duty.


1,300 us dollars - about a grand english...

you can do much better with a kit if you can solder.

 

Agree, DIY usually gives more bang for the buck. But for commercial products, Chinese valve amps represent good value for the money, brands like Ming Da, Consonance Cyber, Yaqin, Audio Space and Melody can certainly compete with high dollar amps like AR, AN, Jadis, etc etc..

 

I agree with some I have heard - they are not half bad.

Amps from China are a very mixed bag - some good , some bad.


Another unfortunate achilles heel is their resale value. They are cheaper to purchase, but also have low residuals.

 

what you say could well be true.
If no one has done it before then that could be a very good reason.

The attenuator route is an option but was trying to keep things all in one box.
in view fo the size of some of these switchable amps it cannot be any more than wiring. can it?
Hellllo www.zerogain.com

Just wanted to introduce myself to you guys!

Debbie from good old Neath


XX

 

Hi, are you thinking of building a kit amp, - a digital switching amp?

 

Hi, just found this forum whilst searching for details of a Sepora p88i amp. This thread is very helpful and maybe I can add my experiences. I bought a KT88 triode amp from the Affordable Valve Company and whilst the owner is really helpful and will talk until the sun comes up, his company has a policy of not letting you touch anything on the amp without voiding the warranty.

After a year of the amp sounding beautiful, there was a major problem with a transformer and it had to be posted back for repairs (£30). After 8 weeks of no music, it was returned (£30 and £150 plus VAT for the repair) and it had the cage fitted over the valves. You couldn't take this off without destroying little stickers and doing so invalidated the warranty. Feeling somewhat pi**ed of with being told what I could or couldn't do with my amp I removed the cage and also replaced the Chinese valves with EH valves. You are not "allowed" to change the valves yourself (voids the warranty) and there is no way of re biasing the amp yourself. (Certainly not a numpty like me). Now a year later there is an electronic noise when the amp is on (a buzz) and a scratching noise when turning up the volume. The latter may be caused by dirt and taking the valves out and putting them back again does help if only temporarily. However, I fear the amp may fail soon and in that event, I wont bother repairing, hence my searching the Separo amp.

I saw the post about Cattylink; I used them to order an Eastsound E5 CD. Brilliant bit of kit; ordered on a Sunday afternoon and it arrived the following Thursday! Needed a hoist to get it out of the packing (joking) but it was beautifully packed. Superb interconnects and remote included. the price I paid was £500 inclusive of VAT and carriage. Not sure f this was correct but, hey ho; no visits from the Customs yet. I would heartily recommend them.

I'm a firm supported of top end Chinese audio kit. the finish and build quality are superb. A few English audiophiles are a bit sniffy about my gear but I am very happy with the sound (which is what matters after all) and I secretly enjoy the fact that my gear sounds as good if no better than their Linn, Quad and other systems costing multiples of what I paid.

Many thanks for your interesting posts and I look forward to being a member of this excellent forum.

 

Hi minx and welcome.

There is some excellent Chinese built kit around.
Quality of parts and manufacture varies just as it does in any other country. So China will have a range of quality from rock bottom dross to superb.

A good example of the latter would be Cambridge Audio.
Some excellent kit, well build and at very keen prices.

The AVC fiasco is ridiculous.
Ok, I can understand that a manufacturer might want to specify valve types as there are certainly some that don't conform to original spec, but insisting that the amp be shipped back to the manufacturer to change them is nuts.