Xiansheng 728 Vacuum Tube Preamp

[JimBRICK]

Anyone have any experience with this?

http://www.pacificvalve.us/Preamps.html

[dorokusai]

Yea, its generic "Chinese" gear....what's your obsession with this stuff?

[F1nut]

Yea, its generic "Chinese" gear....what's your obsession with this stuff?

It's cheap.

[JimBRICK]

exactely LOL

[JimBRICK]

I want to buy something tube but I dont wanna get something for 700 bucks and then say "oh **** its not for me"

[michael_w]

That's the great part about rolling tubes. You can change the sound in a heartbeat for fairly cheap. That's talking about tubes in general (not the offshore mass produced gear). I see a lot of Ming Da gear hitting craigslist / canuck audio mart every once in a while.

[W WALDECKER]

Anyone have any experience with this?

http://www.pacificvalve.us/Preamps.html

It is ugly,with questionable build and circuitry. i am willing to bet it sounds like Ass! other than that it seems like a really good deal

[marvda1]

these have been getting prett good word-of-mouth, audio mirror.
http://cls.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/cls....ube&1188944886

[ohskigod]

if your gonna go tune on budget, just go used.

[phuz]

I've read some things about folks getting burned on the chinese stuff. Bad quality... knock offs... etc.

I'd avoid it and get used, KNOWN gear.

[madmax]

The cheapest gear is good known gear used for about 50% of list. This thing (as well as everything else) is worth half as soon as you receive it. 5 years from now, its still worth half. Buy used if you are worried about cost.
madmax

[fredv]

Here is my 2 cents worth:
1. For this price, you can't even buy parts and build one yourself.
2. Get the mind set that this will sound like a $299 preamp, then you can only be pleasently surprised. Don't get me wrong, this doesn't mean this preamp will sound bad!!
3. Tube rolling can't fix a bad circuit design, watch out!! However, this circuit topology looks quite decent.
4. If you are into mod spirit, prepare yourself to modify this pre. Quite a lot of low cost Chinese tube gears are half brew (come on, yo get what yo pay for). However, quite a few can be up a couple notches by tweating, but then it will no longer be the same cost :-)
5. I would permanently bypass the tone control if I were to buy it.

All in all, it looks like a good value for this price. You are likely to be pleasently surprised than disappointed :-)

[Zero]

Save your pennies for something worth owning ; something to take pride in. China Fi? Blah

[treitz3]

Not to mention, are you going to pay to ship it back to a dealer in China and then pay again to ship it back? ..............and what if that shop is a bogus shop? You gonna fly out there and "get 'em"?

[treitz3]

For a repair, that is..........

[fredv]

For this one, it is not the case, sort of. You ship back to Pacific Valve (Geneva, IL) for repair. Whether they will ship back to China is a different story, but you don't pay the full shipping to China for sure :-)

[Early B.]

Too many knobs -- that's a deal killer regardless of brand.

[Midnite Mick]

Save your pennies for something worth owning ; something to take pride in. China Fi? Blah

HEY!!!:D

[Early B.]

FWIW -- there's a lot of Chinese branded gear that is excellent such as Shanling. You gotta know what to look for and where to buy from.

[cbl117]

For what its worth, I've been burned by a tube cd player I bought from pacific valve. I had the MHZS cd33e. Within a month of owning it the left channel develops popping noises. Based on my experience with chinese gear (which is quite limited) I'd stay FAR away.

[fredv]

It is quite true that the quality control (or lack of) of Chinese gears isn't as good they can be. That's one of the reasons why they are cheaper than the comparable boutique brands. Like Early said, some are pretty good and the odds of getting non-defective is better than leap of faith, but again, there is a reason why something is sold at certain price. cbl117, did PacificValve honor the warranty and fix it for you? If so, did they tell you what was wrong?

[Shizelbs]

Save your pennies for something worth owning ; something to take pride in. China Fi? Blah

I dare you to look my Shanling in the tubes and say that.

[Zero]

Shizelbs - For the life of me, I simply cannot justify a trip to Washington state on nothing more than a dare to look down at a piece of China fi with a mocking smile. The truth is, I've done that before with the said piece on my own turf. There is no questioning it however, she sure does have a pretty face.

[WilliamM2]

For what its worth, I've been burned by a tube cd player I bought from pacific valve.

I thought you said you bought it off Audiogon, and that's why Pacific Valve was not helpfull.?

[cbl117]

Yeah my bad, I did word that wrong. I contacted the guy that was selling it on audiogon and he purchased from pacific valve. Pacific Valve will not offer warranty work since I did not buy it from them.

[fredv]

cbl117, maybe bad tube, did you try swapping the 2 tubes to see the noise follows? Also, try looking for some cold joints.

[organ]

If you want try the Chinese stuff, look at companies that already have a good record in North America like Antique Sound Lab, Shanling, Ming Da, Sheng Ya and a few others.

Here's a budget one worth trying out... http://www.divertech.com/asllineone.html

[Yashu]

organ, I was looking at that very preamp the other day on audioadvisor, but I couldn't find many reviews on the net, forums or otherwise, about it. Have you tried it?

On another OT note,

I delt recently with a company that was getting a bad rep. because chinese knockoffs began to appear on ebay, exact copies of the products that this company produced, but with extremely inferior quality. People would buy this stuff, thinking they were getting a deal, and then something would break right away, and then these persons would contact the actual company thinking their product was under warranty. Since these were knockoffs, those people were screwed and, by word-of-mouth, the legit company was recieving an undiserved negative reputation.

I will say that Pacific Valve sells some outdated products as-new, and non dealer authorized, and then those same types of warranty issues crop up. I don't quite trust them. They have some good deals, but they don't give you all the details.

My point is, I would follow the advice given above about being careful... sometimes if a deal looks too good to be true, then sometimes it is. Going used is certainly a great way to get some good gear at a discount... esp. tube gear, since essentially, tubed designs are pretty tried and true.

[organ]

Yashu,
No, I haven't tried it but I own ASL's discontinued entry level pre amp, the AQ2004DT. I believe it retailed for $450 when it was around. That thing is amazing. The other day, I connected it to my ASL mono blocks and they have the most incredible dynamics. IMO, I think ASL is on the top of my list for getting the most bang for your $$$.

I know what you mean about the Chinese rip-offs. There are good and bad stuff coming out of there. You really need to know what to look for. An excellent place that sell original designs is www.nysound.com , www.aaa-audio.com is another high end stuff from asia.
I got my ASL pre online and the mono blocks from an authorized dealer (used). My CD player was delivered from Hong Kong (original cd-a8t). They have a distributer in North America now. I decided to gamble back then when they weren't very well known yet because the price was real good. The product is excellent. It replaced my NAD cd player.

[fredv]

I will say that Pacific Valve sells some outdated products as-new, and non dealer authorized, and then those same types of warranty issues crop up. I don't quite trust them. They have some good deals, but they don't give you all the details.

What does this mean? What kind of detail are you looking for? I bought a DAC from PacificValve. It was brand new, and it was the newest product line of Lite Audio. The website had very much everything I needed to know about this DAC before the purchase. I didn't experience what you described about this company.

Regarding to authroized dealer, many Chinese lo-fi gears have no authorizaed dealers in US. If I had $100K, I could order a a couple hundred of gears from the factory and become an importer like PacificValve. You probably have seen the same amp being sold by different sellers. That is the exact reason. IMHO, service is very much the differentiation factor. They all sell the same product, but who will stand behind their customers will be ahead. I don't know PacificValve will stand behind their product, and I frankly don't want to find out, but they did ship very fast ........