A mere 3 days after shipping from Hong Kong, my 332S safely arrived too. Personally, I think Figaro did a fantastic design job. It looks great from all angles. Interesting to those who like to see technical details and 'muscular', but also clean: there are no design thrills that are not related to function. If this was a motorbike, it would be a Ducati Monster. No I don't have one
. Just look at the photo’s and decide for yourself if you like it. Will post better ones later.
The built quality is very good. The only flaw mine has is a minor gap between the frontface and top plate that is only noticeable because all the rest is pristine looking. One time I'll open it up (that always happens
) and then I'll check if I can correct that. For this price range, fantastic 'pride of ownership'.
It's been up and running now for about 6 hours. Reading the 3322 thread, I expected some unbareable sounds to emerge from the unit, but no, it's playing really really well! The highs could be sweeter still and the bass tighter, but I kept my Sennheiser 650 on all the time without listening fatigue. Very transparent and spatial, miles better than what I got from my Dared MP5 (that will go to my sons room and amp some small speakers). Did they give these first 332S units shipping to Head-Fi members some running in already? Furthermore: the tubes are not stock Chinese. The amplifier tubes it came with are Russian 6Ж1П (Voskod '71). The -EB version thereof was rated highly in the Little Dot III review by Penchum. The recitifier tubes were chinese, I replaced these with the Svetlana's. I ordered Ericsson 403B 2 weeks ago but they are not in yet. I leave it at this for now, any more detail on the sound would be too early. There is some hum in mine too. Not too much, but still I hope this will go away when the unit (are the rectifiers the main problem?) is fully run in.
Playing Holly Cole - Temptation now. Sounds gooooood..... And did I mention it looks fantastic? Yep, the big-boy-great-new-toy-feeling is there.