Vellman tube kits
On Oct 23, 12:31*pm, Big Bad Bob BigBadBob-at-mrp3-
wrote:
On 10/23/10 04:09, Patrick Turner so witilly quipped:
One wonders how a kit can be prepared for the price and still generate
a profit, hence my concerns that parts are sourced from China. Not
everything from China is crook though. So let's not assume anything.
Its just that I have had a number of Chinese made amps land on my
bench for drastic surgery to remove the inbuilt fire crackers so
blithely included by our Chinese friends....
I ran the numbers and guessed that (minus chassis) the parts would
individually cost around $1000 or so (excluding any taxes and shipping).
* A tube amp kit for a guitar (different source) runs around $500
(single channel) for a bit less power, but is close to my estimate of
$1000 for 90W/channel stereo. *And those are retail prices, not dealer
prices on the parts.
Ha! Maybe I'm out of touch, but when I blow a grand on parts, they'd
better be the parts to build a 300B...
You've put your finger on the point about kit amps. The amateur gets a
proven (or at least, in most cases, a professional) design, and parts
discounted by volume purchase -- and he pays carriage only once. A
custom amp can easily eat a fifth of the total budget just for the
many minimum postage and courier charges for the parts.
So I'd guess they're making money (which is good, for a number of
reasons). *I'm guessing the added value would be the instructions,
support, and that really shiny chassis with the chrome thingies around
the tube sockets, and not having to extrapolate all of the discrete
component values from the tube specs.
And the hassle. I had one amp of my own design on which it took two
years and then some for all the custom parts eventually to arrive.
After that I decided to build only with off-the shelf parts.
Andre Jute
"The brain of an engineer is a delicate instrument which must be
protected against the unevenness of the ground." -- Wifredo-Pelayo
Ricart Medina
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