Tube Preamp 'Clone' PCB copys on ebay (Marantz, McIntosh, etc)

[powertriode]

Dear All,
You can buy 'clone' pcb's of the famous tube preamps on ebay pretty cheap, I was wondering if anyone had tried any?

Don't get me wrong; I know you only get what you pay for, I was just thinking of buying a couple to play around with.

They mostly seem to be listed by sellers from Hong Kong, who have very good feedback, so I don't doubt the seller's trustworthyness.

Does anyone have anything to report.

[Andrewbee]

They come from this company in Hong Kong. Lots of stuff, the cases look particularly good for the money (in the pictures anyway).


http://www.diyclub.biz/

[ss1]

Hey Andrew,
did you buy anything diyclub.biz? how are they?
thanks

[Andrewbee]

never used them but a couple things look interesting

Andrew

[Bill Fitzpatrick]

Boy was I irked. I visited the site to find 1" size photos with a file size of 120K+. It took over 7 minutes for the main catalog page to load. I wanted to see what they have but no way was I going to wait.

I'm the file size whiner around here and boy did I whine to them. It'll be interesting to see if they do anything about it.

[EC8010]

Agreed, I visited, and left in irritation at the slow speed. My information is that broadband in HK really is broadband, so those large files would have downloaded quickly over there.

[ss1]

hey Bill,
download an offline version of the website then you load it from your local drive. hehe it really depend on your isp.

hey Andrew
cool site. too bad the shipping cost so HIGH. like ouch. they're raising the prices soon too.

[Andrewbee]

Yes, the site is slow, I have a 512 adsl download and its slow but not too bad to me. As someone above noted you could just download the site to your machine and peruse easily.
It seems I am going to be the first one to test the waters, prices go up come July. I am ordering a cat sl-1 "special diy version" which supposedly has a better layout, a HV / LV regulator and
an R-core power trans all for ~ US$200.00. Shipping is US$60.00
yikes! but still a good deal methinks. I sent an email and it came back quickly, perfect English and all my questions were answered,
seems like a professional outfit, I'll see.

Andrew

[tiroth]

Yes, extremely slow on my cable connection as well.

Some interesting stuff, but I confess I too just stopped looking after the long load times!

[dshoaf]

as I write this from London. Having been in HK and Bejing last March, I can tell you that the download times work in both directions. Depending on where I am in Europe, the same applies, too. Considering that the old days required us to send postal mail with stamps, I'm still happy with longer download times.

That said, my comments on the site look promising. I'm not a fan of cloned circuits of old preamps and amps but I'm seriously considering some of the cases for my next project. They take Paypal, too, which helps me as I finance my audio hobby selling stuff out of our well-stocked garage via ebay, using the proceeds via Paypal.

Reports if there's something of merit. I've purchased from the famous Mr. Juki of HK in the past and things arrived fast via international post. Hope this one goes the same way.

Cheers,

David