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Difference in quality in products made in China?

There is a belief among many audiophiles that electronics assembled in China or Korea are not as well made as products assembled in the USA and England. This has nothing to do,(I believe) with the "technical abilities" of workers, as it has to do with standards of quality control, and the sourcing of less quality parts throughout Asia

This may be all hogwash and just biased opinion, but this question comes up to often to be quickly dismissed. From my own experience which is limited compared to other members, the products(amps. pre-amps CD players) I have owned that were made in the USA, or UK, and Canada, have been solid in terms of long term reliability. I would like to hear others opinions on this issue.
sunnyjim

Showing 1 response by jedinite24

jedinite24's avatar
jedinite24
1,503 posts
 
Well I got my first bad component that was made in China. It was a used XiangSheng 728A tube preamp that was made a couple of years ago. The previous owner babied it and sent it to me in original packaging. I've bought from this seller before and I know his gear is well taken care of. When I got the 728A I was swapping out tubes and removed those metal retaining clips on the tubes and put the tubes I wanted to roll in. I thought I was being careful with the swapping but when all was said and done one of the tubes wouldn't light up. I had no sound from the other channels. I take the preamp to my tech and from what he saw the soldering of the sockets to the circuit board were shoddy. Also I managed to crack the circuit board as well. He said the quality of the sockets used to was so so. This is a budget preamp so I wasn't surprised about the quality of the tube sockets. The soldering as well as the cracking of the circuit board was surprising.

I've been good with the bevy of China made products I've boght. From Tube phonos, Amps and solid state preamps it has been a good experience. This one was a shocker to me.
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