My terrible Customer Journey with the Line Magnetic LM-503PA Mono Vacuum Tube Amps


Spoiler: Would I recommend buying a Line Magnetic product? Not when you are in Germany or Austria.

I don't know how the customer support in the United States is, but my customer journey with the Line Magnetic LM-503PA Mono Vacuum Tube Amps in Vienna is terrible.

In the Summer of 2021, I spent 10k on a pair of Line Magnetic LM-503PA mono vacuum tube amps. This was by far my worst decision in 40 years of buying hi-fi gear.

So far, I have enjoyed listening with the amps for 11 months. But for 5 months, I couldn't enjoy listening with the amps because of defects and ridiculous customer support. As I'm writing this, my Line Magnetic LM-503PA is defective at the distributor for repair for more than four weeks, and Line Magnetic has not even sent the missing spare parts from China to Germany yet. But this is just the tip of the iceberg of my terrible customer experience with a Line Magnetic product.

This is why I wrote a customer report about my journey with the Line Magnetic LM-503PA mono vacuum tube amp. The report is about many customer-unfriendly emails, a dealer who doesn't answers emails at all, the European Line Magnetic distributor holding my amp hostage, and Line Magnetic in China refusing to answer my questions.

 

128x128downtownberlin

Showing 3 responses by shkong78

Sorry to hear this.

 

I had been using LM 508 for 4 years without any problem.

 

I may be just luckyl.

 

Thomas

@dht4me 

 

+1

 

I have not had proiblem with LM 508 for more than 4 years.

 

I agree on the point of upgrading tubes.

 

One more point is that you had better not leave it on more than 3 hours.

 

It does not have enough heat sink to get the heat out.

 

Thus I alway turn off the amp after playing it for 3 hours and have a break of one hour or more.

 

Thomas

I also have Silbatone 300b amp which cost more than 50K$ with silver foil  transformer.

 

I need to change capacitors inside it after 5 years.

 

The serviceman gave me advice to measure the temperature on surface.

 

if it go above 120 F (about 50 C) , then insdie capacitors will lose life sooner than expected.

 

I found my Lm 508 reach 120 F after 3 hours of play.

 

Thomas