Inexpensive Tube Amps

I had a Bada for a while, a Chinese hybrid tube headphone amp, drive the bejesus out of my Sennheiser 600s, hence the hybrid. Dunno if they are still around, maybe.

The lowest I would ever recommend for a tube amplifier would be Yaqin as mentioned above.  Any less and you are seriously gambling your money.  I'd also stay away from older Jolida units as they have issues with the PCB boards - I've been down that road with a SJ302a and it wasn't fun or cheap.  Shuguang also had some decent amps but I'm not sure you'd find any at a 'budget' price.

If you wanted to get a feel for what tubes were and not worry about the hassle, I'd recommend checking out the Dayens Ampino solid state integrated.  Its got that tube sound to it and would be a safe bet to see if you want to jump down that rabbit hole.  When I got this in, my Shuguang 845 monoblocks set to the side for several months while I enjoyed the Ampino.

@lowrider57 , yes I was referring to you. Your statement, then, does not make sense. Sorry, no offense. 

I had a yaqin back in 2005. It caught fire and I came close to losing everything. It was a cheap piece of junk and the amp had sharp edges all over it. Cut my hands on it as well. Bought it brand new off the ebay seller in Hong Kong or perhaps China, its too long ago to remember correctly. That was the last Chinese amp I ever owned. It was a hybrid, solid state outputs and tube input. Power transformer and the entire circuit board was burnt to a crisp and that smell lingered in my house for a long time.  It also took out the crossovers in my Vandersteen 2ce speakers.  Richard Vandersteen insisted I played the speakers too loud, until I told him about the amp catching fire.

I was just about to post my concern about safety....   thanks for sharing that Stereo5