50 Watt all tube stack for £319?

[Toe-Knee]

I like how it's powered up in that pic with no speaker attached :)

At the price I'd be wondering if they were made by starving children in a Chinese sweatshop every time I plugged it in. £99 is ridiculous, you'd have a hard time just buying the transformers and tubes for that money.

This is without a doubt what's happening here. There's no way on this earth it could be done any other way.

Even cheaping out on everything it would come to more than that.

I imagine they buy mass amounts of generic parts at barely nothing per part and give children bags of rice in payment

[Frank]

It is possible to build a valve amp cheaper, lookee here ...

http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/instruments-amps/190738-hundred-buck-amp-challenge.html

[Afghan Dave]

I like how it's powered up in that pic with no speaker attached :)

At the price I'd be wondering if they were made by starving children in a Chinese sweatshop every time I plugged it in. £99 is ridiculous, you'd have a hard time just buying the transformers and tubes for that money.

This is without a doubt what's happening here. There's no way on this earth it could be done any other way.

Even cheaping out on everything it would come to more than that.

I imagine they buy mass amounts of generic parts at barely nothing per part and give children bags of rice in payment

Employee of the Month

[Toe-Knee]

It is possible to build a valve amp cheaper, lookee here ...

http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/instruments-amps/190738-hundred-buck-amp-challenge.html

That's fairly interesting. I'll have a full read through later.

[Toe-Knee]

I like how it's powered up in that pic with no speaker attached :)

At the price I'd be wondering if they were made by starving children in a Chinese sweatshop every time I plugged it in. £99 is ridiculous, you'd have a hard time just buying the transformers and tubes for that money.

This is without a doubt what's happening here. There's no way on this earth it could be done any other way.

Even cheaping out on everything it would come to more than that.

I imagine they buy mass amounts of generic parts at barely nothing per part and give children bags of rice in payment

Employee of the Month

I see he won the honorary BOX rather than a bag for being employee of the month.

[Frank]

At the other end of the DIY spectrum there's this guy ...

http://www.tubelab.com/833SE.htm

[Nitwit]

At the other end of the DIY spectrum there's this guy ...

http://www.tubelab.com/833SE.htm

That guy must hate shirts.

[HTH AMPS]

At the other end of the DIY spectrum there's this guy ...

http://www.tubelab.com/833SE.htm

A 200w SE amp, gotta love that guy.  I got told I was crazy (by transformer companies) wanting to do parallel SE 6550s.

Talking of parallel SE amps, I believe Laney recently put out an amp with four EL34s in parallel SE configuration.  I'd like to see the schematic of this amp, curious.

[Frank]

Tubelab George is a legend, here's his thread where he tortures a box of 6V6 to death for daring to lose their vacuum ...

http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/tubelab/124527-photos-death-simple-se-6v6s.html

[jpfamps]

At the other end of the DIY spectrum there's this guy ...

http://www.tubelab.com/833SE.htm

John Chambers in the UK does a good line in extreme valve amps. Notice the size of the transformers on this beast (which he winds himself!).

http://www.chambonino.com/construct/const17.html

[jpfamps]

also iirc the amp only has an 8 ohm out, so that might be annoying, too.

I'd expect the output transformer has other taps on it but they've saved money by not fitting an impedance selector switch.

You will also save money by only having one secondary in the OT, so I expect that there aren't other taps as it looks like costs have been kept to a minimum.

Incidentally, you can also save money on the OT by not interleaving the windings, not using interwinding insulation (or even using a split chamber bobbin), using a smaller stack, using cheaper steel, using thicker laminations, stacking the laminates in pairs or greater, but without reverse engineering the transformer it will impossible to assess which (if any) corners have been cut.

[Frank]

That's a good point, if you buy a cheapo valve amp then you can't really be surprised when the transformers start spewing out smoke and sparks. And good luck trying to get spares and technical support from the manufacturer.

[Tellboy]

At the other end of the DIY spectrum there's this guy ...

http://www.tubelab.com/833SE.htm

John Chambers in the UK does a good line in extreme valve amps. Notice the size of the transformers on this beast (which he winds himself!).

http://www.chambonino.com/construct/const17.html

Hmm .. No problem with headroom using that in a pub gig  8)

[dave_mc]

I'd expect the output transformer has other taps on it but they've saved money by not fitting an impedance selector switch.

yeah possibly. i vaguely remember someone somewhere saying it did have other taps, but could be wrong. obviously that's only useful if you're up to doing the work yourself... as jpf says, at the price it is, you don't want to be putting much money into it.

though as jpf also says, not having other secondaries would keep the cost down, so maybe it doesn't. :?

[Lucifuge]

15 watt 1x10 combo with FX loop £112.

http://www.thomann.de/gb/harley_benton_ga15.htm

Really though, I've owned a few different cheap valve amps, and my experience is that unless maybe you are competent at modification (I'm not) then for the money you can get better sounds using modeling gear.