Dark Voice 339 - Page 5

Weird business with Boyer npdang...here's to the second try (at ordering) one of these amps having a successful and satisfying outcome for you. I'm definitely looking forward to hearing about this amp.

Peete.

Yep,Boyier aren't the best in the world to deal with.I can vouch for that .

Hope your transaction with Liuyi (Yuking09) goes well.He seems a genuine guy and has been helpful in giving me advice in getting my 337se fixed.

Looking forward to your listening experiences with the 339 

No word on this amp yet?

I actually ordered it from Audiophile China and was just told today that it would ship in 2-3 days (after over a one week wait) so I'm crossing my fingers.  I regret not ordering from Yuking directly but he took a day longer to reply and I had already placed my order at that point.

Maybe I could say some things about this amp because I had pleasure to visit the workshop that makes this amp in early August. Since the visit was made about one month ago, my memory may have faded quite bit. Please forgive me if there are any errors or inaccurate descriptions. Just in case, I would also like to make it clear that I definitely and absolutely have NO relationships/interests/benefits in this company AT ALL. All the statements here are my personal impressions about the workshop and the amp. They are put here just for sharing the information about this amp. 

As we know the factory/workshop/lab is in Chengdu, China. When I was there, I used the phone number I found on the internet to call the workshop. Mr. Deng, who is one of the owner and the manager, picked up the phone. Over the phone, I told him that I was interested in their 339 amp and would like to visit their workshop. Mr. Deng was a very nice person and said I was welcomed to visit them. During the phone conversation, he even offered to pick me up by his own car. I could not take his offer because of other commitments around that time. I went to the workshop the second day with a friend of mine.

During the visit, I mainly did three things: (1) Discussed 399 amps with Mr Deng; (2) Visited their storage rooms for their products and parts; (3) Listened to the 339 amp.

1.      I was impressed by the skills of the two technicians working there to assemble 339 amps. The amp was assembled completely by hand. The wires used was rather think, and the technicians soldering work was great. The parts and wires were arranged beautifully. It looked to me that the technicians were making some kind of crafts instead of amps. The following are some points impressed during the visit:

a.      The parts used in the 339 amps were of good quality. I had no complains about the resistors, capacitors, and wires used in the amp. I was particularly impressed by the tube sockets in this amp, they seemed to be of high quality.  

b.      From the 1^st picture post by cal8949 above, we can see that there are 3 black boxes behind the tubes. The two on both sides are power supply transformers for each channel, and this amp does have two independent power supplies.The 339 amp also has two independent volume controls.

c.      The black box in between the power supply transformers contains the output capacitors. This 399 amp does not have any output transformer. The output capacitors are some kind of film capacitors made in Japan (I forget the brand even though Mr. Deng told me) by-passed with polypropylene capacitors (seemed to be made by Wima). These capacitors are assembled on small printed boards and can be easily swapped out if one wants used his/her own capacitors.

d.      The chase of 399 is beautiful. It is made of steal with three aluminum decorating boards. The boards beneath the tubes and in the front are quite thick. Most of the marks on them are machined instead of paint.  

e.      Mr. Deng was knowledgeable about tube amps and how to make tube amps. He shared several stories about the fates of tube factories in China and the places where they could get their supplies of tubes and other parts. He told me how they revised the design of 339 amp. The 339 amp looks rather similar to the 337 amp, but with a few critical differences: (a). They moved the tubes from in between the power transformers to the front and this reduced the hum quite bit. (b). They opened a window on the top surface to dissipate heat more efficiently. (c). The 399 amp can use more tubes. Mr. Deng even showed a well made tube adapter for tubes with different structures. 

(To be continued)

2. In the storage rooms, I saw piles of packed amps waiting for delivery. Mr. Deng opened two different packages to show me how their amps were packed, one of them were the 339 amp, the other one I could not remember any more. The packing materials used seemed to be sufficient to me. The box for the 339 amp seemed to be big compared with the other one. I also looked their parts stored on shelves. Mr. Deng said that they were rather picky about parts used in their amps. He said that most of their parts were from Korea and Japan. Some of their tubes were from Russia. He showed me a box of volume controls which they ordered from Taiwan but decided not to use them because of the quality concern.

(to be continued)

Strange. Why did they have to use 2 independent volume pots for a SE amp?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lil' Knight 
Strange. Why did they have to use 2 independent volume pots for a SE amp?

Dual Mono?

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lil' Knight 

Strange. Why did they have to use 2 independent volume pots for a SE amp?

I think the 399 amp is dual mono. However, dual mono does not necessarily have to have two volume controls. 

Also, according to Mr. Deng, using two volume controls makes it easier to match/control the output levels of both channels. In general, there is always a difference between the two channels due to the parts (especially the power tubes) in each channel. In other words, we can think that 339 amp comes with a balance control.

Quote:

Originally Posted by reiserFS 

Dual Mono?

 

    The purpose of separately adjustment is that making a fuzzy model adapt to the ears, or recording the imbalance of level. To adjust, parted, is never put on both sides of the potentiometer exactly the same scale adjustment, but the balance sense of ears.
 

Another refund today

Quote:

Originally Posted by npdang 

Another refund today " class="bbcode_smiley" height="" src="http://files.head-fi.org/images/smilies//smily_headphones1.gif" title="" width="" />

Sorry to hear it, perhaps Yuking09 can step in here.

Third time's the charm.  Went with Yuking directly so hopefully things work out. 

Good stuff,hopefully a happy ending then.

Can't wait to hear impressions,long time coming!