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
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@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

@shkong78 

Interesting. I have never heard of giving tubes a break after three hours. Is this specific to your amp/tubes?

@shkong78 

 

That's interesting. Jack Elliano of Electraprint fame gave me a list of trade secrets before he retired this year and he has a similar note about not running a tube amp for more than x hours however his recommendation is 6hrs so it is not unheard of and that comes from one of the best tube amp and transformer designers to have lived. His designs are licensed to several high end tube amp manufacturers. 

Some interesting things in his list and some real golden nuggets in there.

The thing is heat kills electrolytic capacitors and is their main enemy. the temperature derating curve vs service life is steep and most amps do not have the higher 105degree C rating caps.