China built tube amps

lack of stateside service and support is a real concern, as ralph points out

some china based vendors help solve this by offering free shipping back to location x where they do the servicing, and that can help some

some others reach a scale of sales in the usa or europe that they do set up a least a local repair facility, of course the lowest cost new entrants rarely have this sorted out

that said, tube amps are

-- usually pretty big and heavy, so any need for service or repair gets to be a bit of pain, and if the process requires a trip to china, it won't be by rapid courier, so prospective buyers like the op are well advised to think through these tradeoffs

-- not terribly complicated and circuitry is straightforward, so a local tech who works on tube amps can probably do the work

+1 for CAYIN.

this gave me confidence to try one, very glad I did.

https://6moons.com/audioreviews/cayin/a88t.html

you do want to consider where you will get support, I'm lucky to be 35 minutes away from VAS.

 

 

OP: I think he had an integrated for like $900 off, which was a great deal for that piece. So I asked questions. Then he ripped into his tirade. Just bizarre.

If everyone avoided/ deeply considered using Amazon the world would be a better place

I wouldn't trust that dealer for a second - he's got an agenda of selling you something and apparently believes that a good way to do this is to make some idiotic blanket statement like 'All amps made in China are junk' or something like that. I'd trust a Chinese amp before I'd trust this dealer.