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[braymond]

I am looking to get a valve amp when I have finished my DIY.

I am going to buy a Yaqin 100B. It is a chinese amp. So much cheaper. With a few customisations and buying a few hundred quid of valves, you have an amp that is on par with almost anything else money can buy. I will get a decent turntable for a few hundred quid. But I also have the squeezebox touch and an external DAC. The Touch can support 24bit 192khz audio. So I am now upgrading my digital audio collection so that I have something to play.

i am familiar with that manufacturer and amp. I have a chinese cd player which was cheap (its basically a Mark Levinson rip off) for what it is. I no longer use it to be honest as it doenst sound as good as my squeezebox via my dac . When you say it will be on par with anything else its really quite subjective. I have had a couple of valve amps both commercial and home baked - they sounded nice but there are certain characteristics of solid state I like - bass control being much better. My last pair of speakers had a nasty impedance curve so they never really got along. The yaqin is a real bargain though - just be careful rolling parts - you can end up chasing your tail tweaking things. I will give you an example - people have a penchant for rolling op amps in devices - its something I tried at home and work years ago - and initially things sounded "better" . After a while I no longer liked it. When I got the circuit on the AP and measured it was wildly out of spec, the op amp was oscillating , creating all sorts of subtle distortions. Proceed with caution, and measure it if you can :-)
Also, make sure the thing is earthed properly - I've seen some very dodgy chinese builds and you are talking a few hundred volts dc in a valve amp so not to be trifled with

[Zoots]

It wasn't until I saw Bod mention the B & O loudspeakers that I remembered I had some B & O stuff myself, after saying I had nothing.
A Beocenter 9500 with Beogram 5005 and some BeoVox RL 6000 loudspeakers.
None of this is set up though, it's in storage - it's not the sort of set up I'm wanting to have these days.

[braymond]

Lovely styling on b&o gear . Never thought the sound quality matches the design aesthetic . Certainly not bad though!


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[Geko]

Also, make sure the thing is earthed properly - I've seen some very dodgy chinese builds and you are talking a few hundred volts dc in a valve amp so not to be trifled with

The Yaqin quality has improved a lot. And the price has increased to go with it, over £500 delivered with the chinese valves. Then another £300 on top for new valves.

It's the IEC lead that comes with it that is the death trap. But that's an easy swap. Not an expert myself, but joined an owners group on FB. Lots of good advice from some real electronics experts.