Jolida Fx10

Sorry, I can't advise you about a match with your KEF speakers. When I bought the FX10 I did try it in my living room both with a pair of Soliloquy SAT5 monitors and my Devore 8 floorstanders, neither of which is particularly sensitive. The FX10 sounded great with either pair in an 11 x 17 room but I didn't try to drive the speakers very hard.

I am thinking of getting one of these amps and running a pair of Polk RT55's. I have the opportunity to bring my speakers into a local shop 1st to see how they handle the amp. I do not have any tube amps as yet. I was looking at Bob Latino's Dynaco ST120 kit but it cost a lot more that the $499 the Jolida FX-10 is going for albeit not nearly as powerful. Am I going to be sorry? My musical taste vary from the Beatles to NIN and some Dubstep.

I think it is worth giving the Jolida a listen. I suspect the Dynaco would go louder and clearer if working properly but it might be a non issue depending on your lsitening habits. The Jolida surprised me in that regard for its size and cost when I heard it.

Definitely audition them with your speakers. Whether it works for you may also depend on the size of the room. Ten watts isn't a lot but my FX10 has more than enough power in an 11x11' office with a pair of fairly inefficient single-driver speakers. I continue to be amazed at how satisfying the sound is and I've had no problems with the FX10 listening to it several hours a day.

If you're new to tubes the FX10 is a good introduction. The auto-bias feature means you don't have to deal with that for awhile. Some tube amps that aren't auto-bias make it easy to set the bias manually but some are a pain in the ass to deal with.

Another advantage is that upgrades to the EL84 and 12ax7 tubes are relatively inexpensive and the amp does respond well to an upgrade from the stock EH tubes.

I recently sold my Jolida FX10 here on the A'gon. I recommend them highly. I used them in a 14x16 home office with stellar results. Never a problem and to get best results one should use high efficiency speakers (mine were generally Tekton 4.5s and Tekton Lore at times). The other thing is change out the stock Electro Harmonix tubes. I had great success with NOS Russian 7189s, Ei EL84s, TAD EL84s. For the 12ax7 I used NOS Telefunkens, Ei, Mullards as well as a Tubestore Northern Electric NOS with good results. In my room I often had a wall-to-wall stage that was nicely layered, good tone, love the EL 84s, fast and punchy, good enough detail, the little thing was just musical and went as loud as I could tolerate. The bass on the Lore was very good. Tight and lively. This amp plays way above its price point, great 2nd system or first if doing a desktop or just starting out with tubes. Really fun little guy.