A point I'd like to bring out in light of the context of all this is that if you want a TRULY hi-end amplifier, then DIY will save you enormous money over commercial offerings. By "hi-end," I mean Tamura or Plitron iron, Black Gate and motor run oil caps for power supply filtering, tantalum resistors, Teflon coupling caps, etc. You can build an amp (if properly designed) that will devastate commercial amps costing far more. You are buying 100% quality with your money, not pretty cosmetics and someone else's labor. Having said that, if you're not wanting to spend that kinda dough and/or are happy with a more "average" amp, you can still build an amp for a reasonable price that you know is not built with junk, has proper lead dress and layout, and good solder joints. An excellent 1.5 WPC EL84 SET can be built for around $400 using good parts like paper in oil coupling caps, Riken signal resistors, and SCR/Solen Fast Cap filter caps.
As a longtime guitar amp repair tech I can tell you that Chinese made replacement output transformers for guitar amps are the biggest pieces of junk on the planet, as are also Chinese guitar amps in general. They are cheap, BUT............
I can only hope their audio transformers and amps are better.
I guess what one calls a bargain is all left up to our own personal interpretation. :)
Thermionic
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