I too own the Cayin A88T and agree with Paul Burke on his assessment. A damn good amp for the price with musical sound,good bass, detailed and hamonically rich mids and sweet highs. Only, on certain (very few) recordings, the upper mids tend to be forward and bright sometimes. It may be due to the stock power tubes. The 6sn7s are RCAGTB.
The amp drives my Dyn 82s surprisingly well for just 22W. The sound does become congested with confused bass on bass heavy tracks such as Gladiator (this even in ultralinear mode). But this could be due to my power hungry speakers. I am sure this will not be an issue with more efficient speakers.
The only other issue on this amp is biasing. You have to open bias the amp from the inside. The process is easy but a bit risky. Internal biasing could be intimidating if you are new to tubes.
In terms of swapping tubes, it is cheap unless you go for very rare NOS tubes. A pair of current production KT88s could cost anywhere between $80-150 per quad. So this will not be a problem.
The amp drives my Dyn 82s surprisingly well for just 22W. The sound does become congested with confused bass on bass heavy tracks such as Gladiator (this even in ultralinear mode). But this could be due to my power hungry speakers. I am sure this will not be an issue with more efficient speakers.
The only other issue on this amp is biasing. You have to open bias the amp from the inside. The process is easy but a bit risky. Internal biasing could be intimidating if you are new to tubes.
In terms of swapping tubes, it is cheap unless you go for very rare NOS tubes. A pair of current production KT88s could cost anywhere between $80-150 per quad. So this will not be a problem.