[removed]

From what I’ve heard cheap tube amps are a fire hazard. I have no experience with tube amps, my only amp is my Apple dongle but cheap tube amps are generally advised against wherever I go

I have a fosi audio I got off Amazon, swapped the tubes for ge milspec.

It was 50 bucks. And honestly I was blown away. No issues going on 1 year later

I love fosi as a brand, they make amazing products, but those amps are more of a hybrid or solid state with tube pass through. Not exactly what I'm looking for

That's a myth - no more dangerous than light bulbs or other electric devices. Don't pour gasoline on it or stack your newspaper collection next to it, and you'll be fine.

Cheap tube amps are a lot of fun for both music to speakers and guitar. They're also something of a lottery - a 150 dollar model can seem like a total waste and another of the same type a piece of magic. I have amps at 20 times that cost that are far less fun to use. Sometimes you pay for build quality but not much dynamism.

Go forth and experiment. Understanding marrying speakers matters more, too, but happy accidents happen. Tube amps are good for everything. I even got my cats one, apparently.

Haven't tried these in particular but purely on the tube amp side, as a quasi collector, if 150 isn't a big loss for you and you've done some basic research on speakers, then go for it. They're often fun and surprising to play with, especially with good EQ. Don't get lost in the math or cables marketing. Much more so with big speakers in big rooms, than headphones, however. These little guys may be good in a smaller setup. Not sure with headphones.

The lottery part is what I'm excited to try! No clue if it's good or bad! No reviews on YouTube or Reddit or anywhere really, so i could stumble on something great, or something that just at least gives more power to my hd600

https://youtu.be/22kx0q5j-JA

Here's a great video where someone baught cheap tube amps and talked about them and compared them. It was to see if cheap tube amps are worth the purchase, I think he also questioned if they are real tube amps because they worked when the tubes were removed, so it could be a solid state amp with tubes and called tube amps.

He also made a fallow up when he took them apart and talked more about them. https://youtu.be/2Zt5WPdyPTw

Those are both great watches! But those are Targeting a very different type of amp. The ones shown in the video are cheap hybrid amps. They use a chip for the amp gain control, rather than the tube, giving them basically a cheap solid state sounds. The ones I have listed are true OTL (or at least seem to be) tube amps. They seem to share the same basic components to something similar like a bottlehead crack amp, which go for $500+. Im curious as to whether these cheap chinese clones are decent enough to warrant the price since they seemingly haven't made it to the U.S. yet.

I've been told to just get a littledot amp for the money but where's the fun in that?

I know the ones you looked at are in a different class than these, I'm just saying be careful when buying cheap tube amps.

Are you thinking of getting all of them, testing them, and then returning the ones you don't like? Or will you just get 1?

Where did you find these? What are they called?

AliExpress. Just Look up Headphone Tube Amp. I think I'm going to bite the bullet on this one specifically

I have built one (actually two) Ching-feng E100, the top left and the middle right ones in aluminum. It's nice but really hot.

[removed]

[removed]

Be careful with them though. While they truly offer great products, they also have some cash grabs that underperform or straight up lie in the specs.

Don’t all tube amps run really hot?

The XDuoo TA26 will remove your fingerprints.

ive gotten a burn mark that was there for a good week from accidentally touching a tube on my darkvoice with the underside of my arm when i tried to reach over it to grab something on my desk.

lesson learned.

Amplifiers are not rocket science, especially Class A ones, literally ancient technology from 100 years ago. The reason why they are charging hundreds time more solely because of psychoacoustics / snake oil and beautiful designs. Chi-Fis are usually either fake tubes or legit tubes with poor QA. Nobsound literally selling tube amp self-assembly kits if u are into EE. Low end tubes sounds like crap because tubes are there only for lighting and they use inferior op-amps. High end tubes sounds like solid state amps because solid state amps are literally the next and better evolution of tube amps. There is no magic, it just ppl like distortions (even order harmonics) and psychological audio quality boost from hefty price tags and glowing tubes. Every aspect of that can be archive by a cheap SS amp and EQ.

At least some of those in your pic appear to be OTC tube amps... (Output Transformer Coupled). These are still "true" tube amps but are not 'Output Transformer-Less' tube amps. Whether or not any of them are OTL/OTC/Hybrid can only be answered by cracking the case. Personally a cheap tube amp sounds like a good way to fry some cans to me. I would stick to Darkvoice/La Figueroa/Little Dot/Schiit/Bottlehead on the lower end of the cost spectrum. Woo, Rogue, Feliks Audio, Cayin and others on the higher end of that same spectrum.