Dared amps

I bought the SL2000a a few months back. The sound with the stock tubes was just a touch too subdued for my taste. I replaced the tubes with Siemens (another $60 for a pair in addition to the preamp) and I am liking the sound more and more. Very transparent, excellent soundstage. For the money, I don't think there's a better buy.

/dmitry/

Hi Dilly The founteks not cheap arround $1300 US. If cheap you want I would say ASL I have owned 12 ASL products had very good luck with them.

I've had an SL2000a for about a year now. I recently rolled tubes to a Amperex NOS GZ34 rectifier, and Mullar NOS 12AT7's. It sounds wonderful, and has been totally reliable. It can't be beat for the money (I bought it used for $300, plus another $40 for NOS tube).

Hi,
I bought MP-15 (KT-88, single ended) about a month ago new from Audiogon (US distributor). Here is my impressions:

1. Quality of workmanship is outstanding, it is simply stunning to look at. All tube socket are tight, connectors and swithces working as supposed, it looks like a manufactured unit and not a home brew.

2. The seller is a very responsive and nice person to deal with. They even sent me a diagram.

3. It's a new amp and it certainly needs significant break in period. I have it running for about 100-120 hours now, it gets beeter with time. Out of the box it might sound a bit flat and harsh, then it gets much better.

4. Stock tubes: Shuguan (?) KT-88 no problem, P3N -quiet but I don't like them and replaced the with NOS GE 5670 ($20!). They are a bit noisier but have much better sounstage.

5. Strengths:
a. Pace, Rhythm, Presence factor, Low end- it is KT-88 amp after all. Double base, guitars and drums and voices just shine with this amp
b. Midrange is nice and neutral (not 300B lush), but very very good
c. Transparency is very good, better then my modded Eico HF-81, you will hear things that you haven't heard before on familiar records. Also you can hear very slight voice modulations in recordings like Sarah Vaughn and Nina Simone, Or Zoot Sims sax.
d. It's pretty, the clipping tube is fun and useful.
e. Noise floor is very low on my Hartleys (90db/wt/1m) and drives this 6 ohm drovers fine on 4Ohm taps.

6. Weakenesses- minor:
a. I am not completely sold on passive preamp of this amp (that's what I think it is)-it could sounf little flat on some recorings. Perhaps it'll be even better as a power amp.
b. there is a bit of sound coming in if you switch to wrong input by mistake.
c. the markins on volume pot nad input switch are barely viisible - which is not a big deal.
d. It's much better with good recordings: this could be setting of my rig. Perfect for quartets, jazz, and classical, acoustic folk (Bregovich and co).
e. Marketing ploy- they call it SET- it means single ended tube not triode- you can't get 18 watts from KT-88 in triode mode!

My rig:
1. E.Sound CDP- very good
2. Silent Audio silver IC and Speaker Cable- good
3. Hartleys on open baffle with Scanspeak tweeters on the top 1st with a cap at about 11KHz- that's a special topic in itself

Overall impressions of the amp:
Very solid performer. It stays.

Hope it helps
VB

i own a vp16 and have played it every day for a yr.

best sounding amp i have had (i did swap drivers to good effect)

no problems

if someone has a problem with a us produced amp, it's because, well, it's a tube amp and occasionally there are problems. if someone has a problem with a chinese amp, everyone assumes that the stuff is junk.