Mid-fi integrated tube amp advice

jimfoto congrats!!!
Don’t be in a big hurry to roll tubes..Give that amp about 20-30 hours before critical listening and I would check the bias often after it gets playing.....Give it plenty of breathing room,especially over the top...The volume knob gets pretty warm but mine never gave me a bit of trouble...
I look forward to a detailed update..I always love hearing about new converts first experiences like sbuckley above..

Simply Italy nice amp

Hey did your new amp come in?

Yes it did! My apologies, I thought I had posted via mobile but I guess I never sent it and I was out of town for 10 days with no internet connection at all.

It arrived well packed and fairly quickly from Canada (from Tabnac on Ebay). I plugged it in and started playing records. My initial impression was that the mids were much more open and full, especially at lower volume levels than my 30 year old SS A/V amp. It has no trouble whatsoever driving my q900's to high volume levels. All those numbers and calculations seem pretty insignificant at this point. I've not yet set the bias, I've got faith that Tabnac at least checked it but it is on my list of things to do. I've got about 4-5 hours on it so far.

Soooo, quick shipping, well packed, high quality and sound that blew me away, especially with the clarity of the mids at lower volume levels. I couldn't be happier.

I do have a couple questions. I took the aluminum cage off and haven't put it back on. Does this help dissipate heat? What about the Lucite plates around the smaller tubes, do they dissipate or hold in heat? I don't care about looks, I'm only interested in heat dissipation to help preserve the equipment. The two front power tubes are leaning in slightly but appear to be well seated, is this normal? When the amp is "idling" with no music playing is it still burning in, or only when music is playing?

Thanks again for all your advice and helping give me the confidence to jump into an inexpensive Chinese amp.

Cage is just to keep little fingers from hot tubes...Don't know about the locite plates...Standby mode does keep a certain part of the small signal tubes hot,should still last 3500+hours...