Thanks for the review. I notice a couple nice Auris amps you mentioned that are both higher priced than the Mogwai. What didn't you like about them?

The headonia was frankly put very sterile sounding. Lacked emotion despite rolling a lot of 2a3 tubes. I actually did like the nirvana a lot. Very similar sounding to the mogwai. Airier but I felt mogwai fit my needs better and is more versatile considering the fact that it can take a lot of different tubes. Hope this helps

Very nice review, could I get your general opinion on the Otomon amp? It's great that he generally posts video samples of his work, but it's very rare to come across someone who's had the experience of having one of them in person. I'm assuming it was a headphone amp, how did it pair with different headphones? What did you find most memorable about it and what did you like least about it? I'm also assuming you had many of those amps at different times, if it's been too long to remember, it is fine, but how did you feel the noise floor of the Mogwai compared against some of those others?

Edit: If you wouldn't mind humoring me with one more question, where does the Bottlehead Crack fall in?

Hey, I had the 45 tube based set Amp. It's was excellent for the price. One of the lost resolving amps I have heard. But it seems to lack dynamics. It's a little boring if u are coming from something like the mogwai SE or feliks audio's envy. And yes it was a headphone Amp that puts out 1.5-2w. Extremely clean sounding, no noise floor even on very poor wall power. It pairs well with the utopia and hd 580 best. My zmfs are better on the mogwai or my envy.

Mogwai has a significant noise floor of u are using certain tube combos and manageable levels of noise if using certain tubes. So can't give u a concrete answer without knowing what's tubes are being used. For ex el34 and Chalmers valve cv181 combo is silent. Kt88 and 6sn7 is noisy.

Bhc is a good Amp for the price but is Faaar behind the other amps I have mentioned in terms of resolution. Altho it's a soulful pairing with the 6x0.

I hope this helps.

That definitely helps a lot, I'm probably not going to come across another impression of an Otomon amp for a very long time. I'm very interested in their designs, but when it comes to the idea of buying one, there's no decent way to have an idea of exactly what I'd be getting in headphone amp. It's actually quite reassuring to see a description reminiscent of the sound of 45s, because if it's a 45 amp and it sounds like 45s, I can trust that. I probably will try a Mogwai SE next, but maybe after my wallet recovers, I'll catch a prototype and give one a try. Thanks for your time, I had to ask about the BHC, I frequently see lists of kilobuck amps listed alongside the BHC and I always find myself questioning, how good can it get, but the more I look into it, the more I start to understand that it is what you make it.