China built tube amps

If you get a Chinese amp that is sold by a US dealer you should be fine. I would avoid the cheaper Chinese tube amps that only seem to be available on Amazon or eBay. There is a reason they don't have dealer support!

We avoid Chinese parts in our equipment for reliability reasons, the exception being the tubes. The Chinese small signal tubes have been pretty good for us, the power tubes not so much- for them we use Russian made tubes. Oddly, the Russian small signal tubes don't seem to be that good IMO. The Chinese factory producing 6SN7s burned down a couple of years ago so they've gotten hard to get.

This issue is a bit prickly for me. For example if you are looking to repair a vintage audio piece that uses semiconductors, eBay has become a bad place to look for replacements because its flooded with Chinese knockoffs that won't meet spec and will likely fail if you try to install them. My personal concerns are how are the people treated that make the parts and the equipment? I do not know how much is real or imagined on my part. But there are companies that seem to do good work- Topping is one of them; they make extremely well engineered digital gear that is also at commodity prices- compact, reliable and also sound good.

@shtinkydog

I don’t really get it either. It would have been a quick sale for them since I was ready to buy. I’m in sales and know how to recognize a buying signal. I could outsell this guy by wide margins! Who cares what the customer wants. If they want to buy and you have the product then....

 

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.