Anyone have honest opinion of Jolida amps?

Tweakerman I’m sure we all have our idea of what BUDGET means but I’m going to try this one more time.

Many of my friends are music loving students, musicians and dancers for whom spending $600 on an integrated amp is a heart stopping decision. In your last post, you mention the Kora mono’s at ONLY $6K. $6K is more than the value of all their earthy possessions. Your other recommendation of a Capitole or Mephisto (which I presume is your comparison to the Accuphase) is more than the cost of their total system and recordings collections.

Whether I wasted high five figures on my main system configuration is not the point of this thread.

For $600 I got a 302 with decent NOS/Svetlana tubes and a decent aftermarket power cord.

So what integrated amp should I buy for my friends for $600?

I’m still waiting for Ezmerald’s answer.

What’s yours??

If you tell me I’ll get one to listen to and if it is better than Jolida, I’ll buy that unit for my friends instead of the Jolida.

Hey Pls1 you miss my point. Since both Mr. Gthrushl and Mr. Ezmerald are US citizens so are allowed to give their honest thoughts,(they seem to speak from gut feeling) you can take it or leave it. Let Mr. Dakajoba go listen for himself. If you refer to the Dec. issue of sterophile you'll see one of the VERY few reviews i like by a "professional" reviewer. Fremer gives the prize to the Cosmos($6K) over the AR 200($11K). Now to me that is very interesting. No ads ,nobody mentions Kora in their threads So i go over to their web and see their intergrated called Explorer. I figure "must be expensive" I go to a web dealer and bingo Kora Explorer $750!!!! And get this. Its a Hybred, you get the best of both worlds. I bet you that little 60watt!!! amp holds its own 2x's price. Jolida may be better than NAD and Rotel but that ain't saying much.

I haven't heard the hybrids, but my JoLida 502B with Svetlana KT88s, Tungsram 12AX7s, and Westinghouse 12AT7s sounds pretty damn good through my Kestrel Hot Rods. By the way, I used to be a solid state fan...no more.

Mg just curious how much were the Svetlana the Tungsram the Westinghouse? i've heard good on all 3 So looks like Marakanetz had the right word here, get good tubes. BUT how much are they? You may have hit on something here. In order to get these high quality tubes in a amp you may have to spend alot more. In other words get the Jolida then get good tubes and there you have it a good sounding amp at a great price. But then you are in Kora and others price range which becomes a matter of : does the better tubes in your unit overtake the better electronics in the others. If that makes any sense.???

BULLSEYE!!!

I always know that I have made my point whenever the free speech Red Herring swims by in a post. I had actually though that I was exercising my freedom of speech to push back on those prefer to raising their vituperation to actual experience index as high as possible rather than be helpful to other Audiogoners.

At least we now have your entry on the circa $600 price point for integrated amps. I spent some time poking around Audio Asylums 200 recent posts on Jolida. Many of the positive posts are from folks who have had extensive personal experience, as do I, with multi kilo-buck amps. In “FACT” most of those posts were positives although there does seem to be two confirmed cases of units that went up in flames (In those cases always adjust the bias for the lightest color of smoke as my old engineering prof used to say).

From Audio Asylum I garnered the recommendation of Acoustic Zen. So know I’m going to get one of those and find a Kora Explorer, and although out of the price range a Rogue. I’ll report back on my ACTUAL experience against the 302 and 502 in a month or two.

It does seem from your most recent post that you are a little more flexible that the earlier posts might indicate. Two data points, because there are so many Jolida units available from people who did tube rolling it is possible to get a used unit with very decent tubes. Second data point, a tube amp without tubes is not worthless. If you own a tube amp that you like, sooner or later you will have to retube. At this point your amp is hardly worthless.