2. amps-preamps
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Your journey with lower-watt tube amps -- Can a kit be good enough?

Looking for stories about your low-watt amp journeys.

Here's the situation: I have new speakers, 97 db. Trying them with lower watt tube amps (45/211, 300b, etc) seems generally wise. I am attempting to borrow some from audiophiles in the area. 

The horizon beyond trying these things involves actually buying some. I'm looking at a budget limit of about $5k.

Curious as to folks' experience with lower-watt amp kits vs. those of good makers (e.g. Dennis Had, etc.).

If you have any thoughts about the following, I'd be interested:

Did you start out with a kit and then get dissatisfied? Why?

Did you compare kits vs. pre-made and find big differences?

Did you find you could get the equivalent level of quality in a kit for much less than the same pre-made version? How about kit vs. used?

Also: did you find there was a difference between "point to point wiring" vs. "PCB" in these various permutations?

I realize that there are good kits and bad ones, good pre-made amps and bad ones. I'm hoping you'll be comparing units which seem at comparable levels of quality and price-points.

Thanks.

hilde45

Showing 1 response by scotttubenut

scotttubenut
17 posts
 

I have a full Bottllehead system, consisting of a BeePre 2 preamp, a Kaiju 8W power amp, a Mainline headphone amp, and an Eros 2 phono preamp. The BeePre and Kaiju use 300B tubes. I am running Bottlehead Jager speakers, which are 94 dB, and are voiced to work well with low-power SET setups. This is my main system, and I love how it sounds. I haven't done much in the way of modifying my kits from OEM, but lots of people upgrade their Bottlehead gear with boutique components. My secondary system consists of a Rega Elex Mk4, 72W integrated amp with Dynaudio Contour 20 speakers and a subwoofer. I find that I like the Bottlehead system at least as much as my SS system. It won't totally rock a large room at only 8W, but in my smaller space the Bottlehead SET system is very sweet and engaging.

Bottlehead kits come with awesome instructions, and their excellent forum provides the extra help one sometimes needs when assembling the kits. If you can solder and are at least a bit mechanically inclined, Bottlehead kits are a lot of fun to put together. I highly recommend them.

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