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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
 

@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.

downtownberlin's avatar
downtownberlin OP
19 posts
 

@dht4me 

You know that now EVERYBODY wants the complete list of tips and knowledge. 😅

shkong78's avatar
shkong78
1,485 posts
 

I also have Silbatone 300b amp which cost more than 50K$ with silver foil  transformer.

 

I need to change capacitors inside it after 5 years.

 

The serviceman gave me advice to measure the temperature on surface.

 

if it go above 120 F (about 50 C) , then insdie capacitors will lose life sooner than expected.

 

I found my Lm 508 reach 120 F after 3 hours of play.

 

Thomas

canibefrank
406 posts
 

I had a bad expertise with my rolls Royce

It has a previously opened jar of grey poupon in the mini fridge

dealer wouldn't pay for my disability resulting from this affair

 never again

 

dagda
17 posts
 

@fatdaddy2 

Since you seem to be quite rightly annoyed about your Tesla purchase and your bad experience, I would have thought that you’d have some empathy for a person getting shafted by a HiFi company. It would appear that LM don’t have even the most basic protections on a 10K product. Given the lethal voltages tube amps run at, this is unforgivable. In this case there was a blown tube and transformer close to going critical. Since excess heat was mentioned, I’m guessing critical is catching fire. So, the OP spends 10K on amps that can fail in a way that they could catch fire and burn his house down. Loss of property and potentially life.

In that context, I think it’s entirely reasonable for people here to conclude that LM amps are not worth buying and should be avoided.

Perhaps you have some LM amps you need to shift so you can afford to replace the Tesla? 😜

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