That's a show stopper.The OP's speakers need at least twice that and 3X would be better.
All too often, goals and finances don't intersect. 🙁
you can determine that without knowing how big his listening room is and how far from the speakers he plans to sit?
Neighbour asked me to recommend a diy kit tube amp in class A up to 1000$ for his friend in Canada. I'm not versed in tubes so If you have a suggestion, let me know, thanks.
I am not versed in Tube amps but I do like the little 6L6 Elekit tube. TU-8200R I believe. Make sure to pair it with somewhat efficient speakers.
The cool thing about that little Elekit that I mentioned is that there is a jumper on the PCB that you can use to switch between Triode, pentode and I believe Ultra Linear. Kind of fun to play with. There is also a thread where a guy made a list of relatively inexpensive upgrades that you can do to it. Lastly, there is a forum member here (vkung) who sells Elekit stuff as well as another brand or two of tube amp kits. He is reputable and provides good support for the items he sells.
Hopefully this helps. 🙂 Should be a easy way to go about it as there is a lot of info support etc for it.
Hopefully this helps. 🙂 Should be a easy way to go about it as there is a lot of info support etc for it.
Save another $300 and get something better. It will be worth the wait.
Like say a restored Dynaco ST-70, or ST-35.
Like say a restored Dynaco ST-70, or ST-35.
The Dynaco speakers sound at their best with good solid state amplifiers.
And I say this owning many tube amps and 4 pr of Dynaco speakers.
I recommend and use a good 30W - 50W per channel ss amplifier for the Dynacos.
Instead I use tube amps on my Quads and LS3/5As, which do need tubes to sound best.
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Then a ST-70 should work if he is wanting tubes. A new kit would be over his budget though. Some of the problems with the Chinese kits are due to using 110v primary transformers, so the B+ and heater voltages will be too high for 120v use. You can add dropping resistors, but you shouldn't have to modify a new complete kit. They like to "clone" known circuit designs, but tend to leave out some components. I guess to save money, but this can cause stability problems, etc. I've seen some really poorly done designs. Not all are sketchy, but you really need to do some research first. I bought an EAR clone that wasn't too expensive, but knowing I would have to drop the secondary voltages along with a few capacitor swaps. It turned out nice, but I wouldn't use it as is out of the box.
It would have cooked the tube rectifier and other tube heaters.
It would have cooked the tube rectifier and other tube heaters.