very clear and smooth sound for the price. sturdy construction. beautiful appearance.

no remote, no phono input but a phono-preamp is available. other than that i cannot think of any particular weakness. this is not a $4000 amp but i am happy.

I am happy with the unit as is right out of box. It is very well constructed. I like the state of the art looks. It is unique looking, and I hate black plastic boxes. I love the sound. It is clear and smooth for a most pleasant sound. I am using Klipsch RF-62 reference speakers. For a super sounding system connect a Jolida amp to a pair of Klipsch reference speakers. Less than $2000 or even $1500 and you have a system that sounds so clear and smooth you will want to listen for hours and hours. I am happy with this most pleasant sounding arrangement. I am very happy with the price paid. I cannot say enough about how clear and smooth the sound is.
I want to climb inside the speakers.

Customer Service

Petery-Hedden delivered the unit and set it up in my living room for me for free. I think they offer free shipping for those outside their area. I can get other repair services from them as well.

Similar Products Used:

Rotel receiver, vintage Pioneer receiver.

Imaging, warm tube sound!

No remote, but you can turn the pot all the way to max and it functions with a pre-amp like a power amp.

One of the best buys in audio. Plenty of power and the warm, open imaging typical of tubes. I don't think you can go wrong for under $1,000.00 I have heard the new self-biasing model. I would look for the manual bias model used and save a few bucks.

Thought I'd update my review of this wonderful little amp. In the two years I've owned it, I've tweaked just about everything - caps, resistors, power supply, run it in triode and removed negative feedback - but there's one thing every owner of this amp should do: upgrade the coupling caps. A big word of caution, though: if you're not comfortable working around lethal voltages, send it to Bill Baker at Response Audio and he'll do the work for you.

For starters, you need to know how to discharge the caps before opening up the amp, let alone working on it. The easiest way is to "play it dead" - with a signal from a CD player or the like going through the amp and speakers, unplug the amp's power cord while it's still playing and let it play until there's no more sound coming from the speakers. Let it sit 20 minutes or so and then you should be able to open the bottom of the unit - use a volt meter when you do to make sure the voltages on all caps are low enough to touch.

There are seven green caps in my unit - four .22uF 400V and two .47uF 400V coupling caps, and one .1uF 600V power supply bypass cap. The bypass cap should be removed and not replaced - it's extraneous and overemphasizes the highs, but it's something a lot of builders and tweakers do out of habit. You'll hear more music and less hi-fi without it.

My recommendation for the other six caps is Jupiter beeswax capacitors, which are faster and more detailed than oil-based caps but retain much of the classic tube amp sound. They're also very widely liked. It's a $100 upgrade (get the 600V caps - 300V isn't enough with the caps running at 285V), but don't skimp on this important tweak - I have a basement full of caps I wasted trying to get this right. SonicCraft.com and PercyAudio.com are two sources for Jupiter caps. Mundorf Silver and Jensen Copper are two oil caps that are also worth considering.

Basic soldering skills are all you need to do this - just de-solder the existing caps (I like a desoldering braid or wick with flux in it - rips up fewer solder spots), then rock the cap back and forth gently to remove it (or just cut the old leads to make it easier). Use a little flux on the new cap lead and solder spot to facilitate soldering. Also use a heatsink clip on the Jupiter caps before soldering - the beeswax doesn't respond well to heat. And don't panic if you accidentally tear up a solder spot - just scrape the circuit board to expose the trace and make sure the new connection is soldered to everything it needs to be.

That's all I'd recommend changing in this amp - anything else might not be to everyone's liking. Jolida has made some excellent choices in building this amp.

Enjoy!

Customer Service

Top-notch - Mike Allen and company have answered every question I've had.

Nice warm, relaxing, dynamic sound at a good price.

Well, you really need to tweak it to bring out its potential, but that can be fun too.

A wonderful amp - but you must replace the stock EL84 and 12AX7 tubes and power cord to find out what this little unit is capable of. Ei (warm but somewhat veiled) and JJ Tesla (clean, dynamic, but a little bright) are the best current production EL84s, and the Sovtek LPS is the only decent current production 12AX7, in my humble opinion. I picked up vintage Tung-Sol and Amperex Bugle Boy 12AX7s on Audiogon that I'm very happy with. Other important tweaks were a Zu Birth power cord (eBay outlet), Vibrapod isolation devices, and an APC SurgeArrest A/V surge protector (took all the noise out of my system). All in all, very nice!

Similar Products Used:

I own Odyssey Epiphony speakers, Zu Julian and Oxyfuel cables and interconnects, and I plan to upgrade my old Sony CD player for a Marantz CC4300 at some point.

Clarity, warmth, and "size" of the sound, excellent sound staging, and details.

Balance control moves the soundstage fine, but only at the end of the dial rotation. No big deal, really.

I've had this integrated amp for over a month now and am extremely happy with it. It replaced a small rotel amp from the mid '80's, with which I was very happy, but I was interested in seeing what the tube amps sound like. Well I was not at all disappointed, and was immediately shocked by the warmth, clarity, and presence of this amp. Suddenly my little Heybrook speakers developed a big sound, full, warm and very highly detailed. The bass is clear and full, the mids are perfectly balanced, and the highs are what i would call "wider", or maybe just "fuller" would be a better word. This amp, especially for its modest price, seems extremely well made, heavy, with quality dials, posts, and switch. I listen almost solely to classical music, especially piano, guitar, and chamber groups, and I now can't get enough of that gorgeous sound coming out of my system... Extremely happy with this purchase!!!!!

Similar Products Used:

Sansui 5000, Rotel 840bx.