Those chinese tube amps on ebay? - Page 3

cmoy/pa2v2 is portable, read this thread for opinions http://www.head-fi.org/forum/thread/492325/the-pa2v2-appreciation-thread/

 

one moment you want a giant receiver under your desk, and the next a matchbox amp in your pocket Lol.

The specs on all of the ebay amps like muse, miri, indeed and bravo are all science fiction lol. If they are properly modified they actually perform very well.

Edited by Garage1217 - 10/24/11 at 2:18am

A grain of salt? Those cheap eBay amps require an entire salt lick. Don't believe any of those specs unless you measure them yourself.

I can't say whether the tube or solid state is better. My hunch is that both of them would be marginal, at best.

If you really want a good amp at a low cost, build one. Don't throw up your hands and say you can't do it. Anyone can. It's not that difficult and $20 of tools will do it. Once you learn how to build, you can go into the high-end on the cheap. The cheap amps cut lots and lots of corners. The only way to get good build quality, a good circuit, and good parts is to build your own. You won't have to pay for labor, overhead and profit. If you want a cheap commercial offering, you're going to find corners cut in build quality, components and circuits intentionally cheapened to cut out components.

Potential fire hazard imho.

For Bravo 12AU7 amp, do the mods from Rockgrotto forums, and you'd have a very decent sounding tube amp for a steal price.

Edited by DefQon - 7/8/11 at 5:34am

Lol I love that bear in your avatar.

 

I love that girl in your avatar. lol

6922EH tube I had with my Indeed G2 was not sounding that great, I think the most musical tube they offer is 6N23P you can find here. They mention :

New OTK (cccp) 6N23P tube made in Russia 1980-1988 but never used! OTK means they passed the russian army QC.

 

I would suggest to check the bias voltage according to this thread at Rockgrotto, because they're usually not good.

 

A DIY project can be as expensive as you want it to be. A basic CMoy will run $20 on the conservative side. Though if you want to go whole hog on boutique parts and custom-machined casing, it could be $600 or $700.

You can also repurpose cheap old cases and find bargains at electronic swapmeets and surplus stores. The more resourceful you are, the cheaper it can be. And yes, DIY is as good or better than commercial. You can build to a much higher standard (point-to-point, the difference is a few hours extra labor) upgrade the power supply to make it very quiet, and anything else you want.

If you want tubes, a good place to start is the $200 Bottlehead Crack kit. Nicely documented, Bottlehead has a forum where you can find help, and the casing is already done. Take it slow and you'll have excellent build quality.

Don't take manufacturer claims seriously. The amp might be hand-built, but by a 12 year old making 23¢ an hour. I don't trust unknown transformers, either. When the primary concern is "low cost," you get crappy cores, imperfect windings, and who knows what it's sealed with or if it actually meets its claimed rating. Transformers are not sexy at all (well, at least not for normal people) and no one ever cares much about them.

But the transformers are the heart of the amp. Would you eat a 99¢ hamburger off a dirty old street cart without health permits? That's what the cheap mystery transformers are like. I won't use them. You want a brand name: Hammond, Edcor, Plitron, Electra-Print, Sowter, One Electron, or several other good brands.

If you want to upgrade to a known transformer, you'll run into casing/fit issues. Then you'll get to the point where you'd be better off just building a DIY amp.

 

Hammond also has some line of good quality small plastic casings esp for portable amp builds.