Anyone have honest opinion of Jolida amps?

In various secondary systems over the last two years I have had Jolida 202 302 and 502 units. I think the 302 has the best sound. The 502 with KT-88s is best for someone who likes a tube sound and rock. I have also compared them directly to the NAD 317. I like a tube sound so I prefer the Jolida but the NAD was also a decent unit. The stock tubes ARE trash and need to be replaced. The Svetlana EL-34s are a good buy. I agree with Dekay overall and especially that the sound is about old Dynaco quality. Used they offer very decent price performance and there is a ready market for them.

I think there is some snobbery concerning the Jolida. Its not a $40K set of Jadis' but, rather, a fine piece of listening equipment. I love this amp. It is smooth, warm, reliable, and tweakable.
I replaced the signal tubes with (2) Ken-Rad VT-231 (military 6sn7) and replaced the single 12ax7 with an FAA 5751 (military 12ax7 with 70% gain). The 5751 works fine for me and I don't notice the lower gain. For power tubes I use Svet. 6550s.

This amp has nice tight bass and sweet (not sticky) mids and highs. The lack of glare using a moderate CDP (Marantz 67se with Art DI/O)is simply delightful (as in I enjoy the music).

By the way, since the Jolida integrated amps have the volume control before the signal tubes, the Art DI/O 6v output can run straight to the amp. inputs without a resistor and without overloading the amp's front end. Actually, the DI/O acts as gain pumper.

The Jolida looks good, sounds wonderful, is reliable and is fun to play with. Anything "better" costs an order of magnitude more.

While in college, I had a sytem composed of a 302A, Marantz cd67SE, and Dunlavy speakers. I honestly have to say that this setup sounded surprisingly good for the money. I never once had any problems with my amp and really noticed a difference in sound (huge difference) when I switched from stock tubes to Svetlana EL-34s.

The jolida is garbage. If you just want tubes at least get a dyna st-70 with an upgrade kit, check the older threads. I'd like to know the distortion levels across the entire audio band on the thing and its power output at 30hz and 20khz (if it can even get that high), just for starters. Wonder what the slew rate is like, and I bet the damping factor (while certainly not one of the most important parameters of an amp) is probably worse than the average receiver 5 years ago. And while you can start throwing better tubes on there and power cords (the latter do nothing), that's just more money down the drain that you could have just invested in a better amp from the start.

To Ezmeralda: OK so for Dakajiba with a budget of around $500 he could get a used Jolida 302 with upgraded tubes, an NAD or a ST-70/PAS combo. Any other specific recommendations?