Has anybody purchased from Mable Audio?

[danFrank]

www.mableaudio.com

Anybody dealt with them? Opinions? They seem to have good prices on tubes.
Thanks, Daniel

[sphinx]

I bought a bunch of components from them. The product was as listed but the packaging was very poor. I had some broken pieces and that was only local shipping to my China hotel!

[Geek]

Yes.

Terrible service and overcharges for shipping in my experience.

Cheers!

[danFrank]

Thanks for the replies. I saw on their website that they had EL156 tubes for $28 each, which seems like a great deal. I e-mailed them and then they said the the price on the website was wrong and they were actually $38 each. After shipping and Paypal fees the price went up to around $43 each, which is not such a great deal anymore. I can get them elsewhere here in the states for slightly more and not have to worry about the shipping hassles from China. I'll just wait for AES to have a tube sale and get them there.
Daniel

PS. I have bought tubes from Russian dealers before with good results, and the Russians are willing to deal with you on pricing.

[danFrank]

Ok, After negotiating some more, I went ahead and bought 20 of the EL156 tubes last Wednesday from Mable Audio.
I received the package yesterday, in good condition. The tubes came double boxed, with styrofoam in between the boxes and the tubes were all undamaged. So the packaging was great and shipping was fast; one week.
As for the EL156, after preliminary testing, it seems like a SUPER beefy EL34. Bias is a tiny bit more than the EL34, but it is much less than the 6550. I think I will make a Marshall Major clone with 4 of these tubes at 550 volts. Should be good for 250 watts.
Has anybody here worked with the EL156, and if so, what are your observations?
Thanks, Daniel

[kstagger]

I built a SE UL EL156 amplifier - the Shuguang tubes are pretty tough and can take a beating (as I found out during my testing phase!). This amp now resides at friend's house and gets a daily workout.

[MellowTone]

I've ordered from them before (a few months back) and found them to be very satisfactory. The shipping on mine was quite high, but it had 20 or 25 kilograms worth of transformers inside. I'm using their OPTs for my Simple SE and they sound great. I would recommend them.