Do chinese tube preamp/amp clones interest you?

I am using and loving a 2003 Sophia Electronics EL34 A/B amplifier. Parts made in the PRC to U.S. (Chinese) owners specs and assembled in Northern Virginia. Previously I owned a Chifi Class A based on 6N1P outputs. The class A benefited from a $100 tweak. It blew up here in the U.S., after a bench tech error. Both amps sounded better than any solid state gear I have ever owned.

I used to have to work trade shows for my work selling our wares. Busses would would pull up and unload hundreds of Chinese people that would come over and start taking pictures with measuring tapes next to our equipment. They would grab all documentation and brochures. They were always polite, bowing and saying speaking Chinese then leave. We let them do this for a few years, not any more. We tell them to politely leave. So, no. I try as much as I can to buy as American as possible.

Thank you all for the comments, political and apolitical, it has opened my eyes to things that I don’t think that much about.

I owned an Audio Space EL84 mini int amp that was awesome and an EL34 GemTune GS-01 that was also very good that was probably a knock off of a Nobsound or vice versa. 

I’m just trying to understand things here - So the companies who design their own tube gear like Audio Space, Ming Da, Jolida, Cayin & others are ok, but the ones who are stealing intellectual property and making clones of US made products are not ok. But what happens when a guy is stealing Nelson Pass’s designs or 47 Labs designs and calling them gainclones or custom chip amps right here in the US? NOGAS, right? Or when guys modify an existing tube amp, is that not cool either? Is it cool if it happens here in the US, but not in Communist China? 

Well, it cheating is Uncool, than if this election doesn’t get overturned, than the good ole USA will have become extremely Uncool, because everyone knows that there was massive cheating going on!!! And if you are one of those who lives in your bubble of MSM propaganda and think there was no election fraud, then just STFU and go buy your Chinese clone/stolen gear.


Wow! That last paragraph was totally unexpected! I wasn’t expecting to get political & nasty here, but there you have it. Let’s move on.

Looking at the new LO Mein preamp.

These cheap chinese preamps are useless. Nearly all of them are missing a key component, a ground stud to eliminate hum. It looks like one cheap cloner made one, made it wrong, and everyone else mindlessly copied the wrong design.