I have had a LM 518IA for 5 or so years, zero issue. And as far as finding a reputable dealer in the US , Tone Imports is the distributor and I was directed by Jonathan Halpern of Tone to Taylor of GoldprintAudio in North Carolina . Both Jonathan and Taylor were easy to deal and communicate with. Service Center in Arizona
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.
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@steven365 Oh wow, thank you so much. Thanks for all your replays. This means a lot to me. Update January 6th: After another email to Line Magnetic in China, some of my questions got answered. (I added them to part 3 of my customer report) However, the majority of questions remain unanswered. They wrote they will ship my spare transformer from China to Europe today. There are still way too many open questions regarding the warranty and repair costs. |
I am sorry to hear this and would never consider a product that self-destructs with a bad tube. I would be concerned about an amp that overheated the way yours did. The heat could cause expansion and damage to components, reducing the life of the product. The manufacturer should send you a new matched pair of amplifiers and an apology, with a protection circuit for the tube issue. |
Tubes can fail. Power tubes can fry transformer when this happens. We do not know if music was playing while it happens, but generally that sort of failure will cause loud noise in speaker, which is hard to miss even if you are not in the same room. Transformer does not burn out instantly - it takes at least few minutes for it to reach critical temperature when power tube is shorted (which is likely happened here). Some amplifiers have advanced protection from fault, but these will be higher tier brands like McIntosh or Audio Research. Generally I would not leave running tube power amplifier unattended. When dealing with China based makers, I would not expect great customer service. In most cases it makes more sense to purchase product directly from China and forgo warranty support other than DOA. If device fails, use local independent repair shop to fix it. Or simply purchase a new one. In case of LM, price difference between ordering from China and EU distributor could allow getting a spare amplifier. |
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