Inexpensive preamps look too good to be true?

My dealer made a good point about these "cheap" brands, where will they be in five years?" Meaning if you keep this piece of gear for a while and require service and they are no longer in business your screwed. Then you end up buying another piece of gear and have spent more than just buying a brand that has been around for a while. Just somthing to think about.

Forget about 5 years, what about 5 months from now? The Pacific Valve stuff has a 90 day warranty, the eBay stuff doesn't indicate any warranty at all. If you can fix them yourself, or are going to mod them and void the warranty anyway, or consider them cheap enough to be a throwaway, then maybe it makes sense. Otherwise, I'd stick with more established companies.

Armstrod and Jlind325is must buy a lot of gear that requires service. In my entire lifetime this has occured ONCE to a TV set that the dealer promptly replaced. I can't imagine anything going wrong with a pre-amplifier that would be unfixable by an experienced service technician, especially if a schematic diagram is available. What have you got to lose, if you buy it and don't like it? Sell it at a loss of a couple of hundered dollars and try something else. I bought a Chinese Audio Experience Symphonies Plus, and the Balanced line stage model as well and have been quite pleased, the Symphonies Plus is about 4 or 5 years old now. Neither has required service other than tube replacements. I say go for it, play around with tube rolling, have a good time, and write a review, good or bad about the product and your experience. Finding bargains in this hobby is definately part of the fun. Happy listening.

Just another case where price gets directly related to performance, it might be great for the money untill people try it why bash a potentially good value, also plenty of very expensive gear is in danger of a company closing.

I have a Dared SL2000A ( $400 ) and very happy with it have fun rolling tubes and cheapest tube sound per dollar and it sound good looks pretty too, beats lot of mid price SS preamps. No problem what so ever even if it breaks down and couldn't be fix then happy to have a reason to up grade lol. Some of the technologies are from old Marantz and Mcintosh circuits designed.