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My terrible Customer Journey with the Line Magnetic LM-503PA Mono Vacuum Tube Amps

Spoiler: Would I recommend buying a Line Magnetic product? Not when you are in Germany or Austria.

I don't know how the customer support in the United States is, but my customer journey with the Line Magnetic LM-503PA Mono Vacuum Tube Amps in Vienna is terrible.

In the Summer of 2021, I spent 10k on a pair of Line Magnetic LM-503PA mono vacuum tube amps. This was by far my worst decision in 40 years of buying hi-fi gear.

So far, I have enjoyed listening with the amps for 11 months. But for 5 months, I couldn't enjoy listening with the amps because of defects and ridiculous customer support. As I'm writing this, my Line Magnetic LM-503PA is defective at the distributor for repair for more than four weeks, and Line Magnetic has not even sent the missing spare parts from China to Germany yet. But this is just the tip of the iceberg of my terrible customer experience with a Line Magnetic product.

This is why I wrote a customer report about my journey with the Line Magnetic LM-503PA mono vacuum tube amp. The report is about many customer-unfriendly emails, a dealer who doesn't answers emails at all, the European Line Magnetic distributor holding my amp hostage, and Line Magnetic in China refusing to answer my questions.

 

128x128downtownberlin
dht4me's avatar
dht4me
83 posts
 

Well the plant in China that makes the LM (Foshun) sells their products through Taobao and other resources and I have their Western Electric 211 circuit Monos which have been extremely reliable. Granted I am a diy guy and I would say that the build quality is very high. The amps were also burned in and tested before shipping. I would say your problem is your local distributor and not the amp brand /origin itself. These amps are also very traditional with old school tech so any competent tech should easily be able to service them.  I have heard rumors of European distributors who are more like salesmen wanting sell things vs being dedicated to customer service.

Honestly the biggest issue is the tube quality that come from the factory. They put base grade tubes in from the factory unless you get the factory to put better tubes in your build. I bought premium Psvane Acme tubes and Emission Labs tubes right from the start and have has zero issues. 

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shkong78's avatar
shkong78
1,485 posts
 

@dht4me 

 

+1

 

I have not had proiblem with LM 508 for more than 4 years.

 

I agree on the point of upgrading tubes.

 

One more point is that you had better not leave it on more than 3 hours.

 

It does not have enough heat sink to get the heat out.

 

Thus I alway turn off the amp after playing it for 3 hours and have a break of one hour or more.

 

Thomas

downtownberlin's avatar
downtownberlin OP
19 posts
 

@shkong78 

Interesting. I have never heard of giving tubes a break after three hours. Is this specific to your amp/tubes?

dht4me's avatar
dht4me
83 posts
 

@shkong78 

 

That's interesting. Jack Elliano of Electraprint fame gave me a list of trade secrets before he retired this year and he has a similar note about not running a tube amp for more than x hours however his recommendation is 6hrs so it is not unheard of and that comes from one of the best tube amp and transformer designers to have lived. His designs are licensed to several high end tube amp manufacturers. 

Some interesting things in his list and some real golden nuggets in there.

The thing is heat kills electrolytic capacitors and is their main enemy. the temperature derating curve vs service life is steep and most amps do not have the higher 105degree C rating caps.

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