Mid-fi integrated tube amp advice

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...

After a month of listening, I finally got around to checking the bias. It's .25-26 across all 4 tubes, considerably lower than the .37-38 I've seen recommended and the .43 printed on the amp. I'm wondering if Tabnac dialed it down for break in. I've got about 50 hours on the amp and think I need to just bring the voltage up to spec.

Any thoughts on the benefits of lower voltage during break in?