META42 vs. Little
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gswpete
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Mine has been sent back for an upgrade. I'm so lonely right now
tangent
Top Mall-Fi poster. The T in META42.
Formerly with Tangentsoft Parts Store
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Disclaimer: I'm just here to provide some perspective. Please don't contact me as a result of reading this thread to build you an amp. That's not why I'm here.
Quote:
It depends on who's building it and what they put into it.
You can indeed build a META42 with just $40 in parts. I personally put the lower limit at more like $60, but only because I believe there's a lower limit on the quality of parts that you should put into an amp. But that's just a conceit of mine. When you're building the amp yourself, you only have to answer to yourself.
Of course it can go up from there. I've put over $200 in parts into META42s before, and there's a guy who posted above who probably spent a lot more than that. (The one who put EL2009s into his amp.) And I'm only talking about literal DIY here, not having someone else building a DIY amp for you. This is audio. You know, the strange world where there are people that will pay $40 for a single capacitor? There are no limits on parts costs other than the ones you put on yourself.
But let's not turn the META42 into a competition. The META42 I listen to the most probably has under $100 in parts. I listen to it the most because it's small, so I can carry it with me everywhere. It serves my needs better more of the time than my more expensive amp.
As for comparing DIY amps to commercial amps, I hope people don't get too wrapped up in the cost aspect of it. How can you compare a one-off amp built by a guy in his house to a mass-manufactured item? The two cost structures have so many differences that I don't think comparing the two on cost makes much sense at all.
If you want a DIY'd amp, get a DIY'd amp. Good reasons are because you like the sound, or like the idea of having it customized to your personal needs and esthetic. See that thread Snow pointed to -- you can't get that kind of customization in a store. An especially good reason to get a DIY'd amp is because you want to build it yourself, so you can make it the way you want it. There's one amp above that the person who built it asked me if I liked it, after he built it. I said I didn't, but that doesn't matter a whit! He built the amp he wanted. That's why people build amps for themselves.
But if you just want an amp and don't care if it's DIY'd, you owe it to yourself to consider commercial amps as well. Good reasons to get a commercial amp are because you want it immediately, or because you want to listen to one in a store before buying, or because you want to be able to call an 800 number to get in contact with the company, or even because you want a machined panel with silkscreened labels.
I guess what I'm getting at here is that if you can't decide between a DIY'd amp and a commercial amp, cost shouldn't be the first differentiator. The real differentiator is "value", and that's a subjective thing. Only you can decide which amp provides what you want.
Quote:
| what kind of a price range is the META? I've seen posts stating their cost is $40 USD and then I've seen posts saying that the cost is over $200 USD. |
It depends on who's building it and what they put into it.
You can indeed build a META42 with just $40 in parts. I personally put the lower limit at more like $60, but only because I believe there's a lower limit on the quality of parts that you should put into an amp. But that's just a conceit of mine. When you're building the amp yourself, you only have to answer to yourself.
Of course it can go up from there. I've put over $200 in parts into META42s before, and there's a guy who posted above who probably spent a lot more than that. (The one who put EL2009s into his amp.) And I'm only talking about literal DIY here, not having someone else building a DIY amp for you. This is audio. You know, the strange world where there are people that will pay $40 for a single capacitor? There are no limits on parts costs other than the ones you put on yourself.
But let's not turn the META42 into a competition. The META42 I listen to the most probably has under $100 in parts. I listen to it the most because it's small, so I can carry it with me everywhere. It serves my needs better more of the time than my more expensive amp.
As for comparing DIY amps to commercial amps, I hope people don't get too wrapped up in the cost aspect of it. How can you compare a one-off amp built by a guy in his house to a mass-manufactured item? The two cost structures have so many differences that I don't think comparing the two on cost makes much sense at all.
If you want a DIY'd amp, get a DIY'd amp. Good reasons are because you like the sound, or like the idea of having it customized to your personal needs and esthetic. See that thread Snow pointed to -- you can't get that kind of customization in a store. An especially good reason to get a DIY'd amp is because you want to build it yourself, so you can make it the way you want it. There's one amp above that the person who built it asked me if I liked it, after he built it. I said I didn't, but that doesn't matter a whit! He built the amp he wanted. That's why people build amps for themselves.
But if you just want an amp and don't care if it's DIY'd, you owe it to yourself to consider commercial amps as well. Good reasons to get a commercial amp are because you want it immediately, or because you want to listen to one in a store before buying, or because you want to be able to call an 800 number to get in contact with the company, or even because you want a machined panel with silkscreened labels.
I guess what I'm getting at here is that if you can't decide between a DIY'd amp and a commercial amp, cost shouldn't be the first differentiator. The real differentiator is "value", and that's a subjective thing. Only you can decide which amp provides what you want.
MERTON
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hah.. i've gone down on the budget of my meta a bit... and i may end up building it myself.. it's just soooo hard to decide what i want that i may have too. and sorry about the earlier price revieling. the only bad thing about building it yourself is you need to know what your doing and you need the tools.. but hten you can build anything yo want.
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