Monoprice 50w Hybrid Amp

FWIW, the all-tube Monoprice (pp EL84) amp looks benign to me. These products are sold worldwide under a plethora of brand names. It would be good to get a look under the hood (althogh even that can be misleading since counterfeit components abound in the current electronics world) but it would be nice to see how neatly - or otherwise - things are laid out, wired up, or soldered together. These factors say a lot, from my perspective, about the fundamental quality (and potential dependability) of a component.

Quality of the output iron is also important, of course -- but the old Maggotbox Magnavox stereo console amps prove that it's hard to go wrong with a simple pp EL84 amplifier. To call the quality of components and the design of those early 1960s amps "modest" is -- well... diplomatic -- but they do sound good.

In other words, the $329 (or whatever) "Monoprice" branded pp EL84 stereo amp may sound fine. That's enough money, though, that it might be worth shopping a little harder/spending a little more in the long run.

I'd also encourage folks to resist the temptation of buying a $329 amp and then putting 600 dollars worth of boutique or NOS tubes in it. False economy, I'd opine.

This is a pp 6V6 Maggotbox amp, but it amply illustrates the extreme simplicity of the design and the execution - despite having been rehabbed with modest quality capacitors. The comparable pp EL84 amp is very similar overall.

P1020247 by Mark Hardy, on Flickr

zingo wrote: »

So I should shouldn't spend $600 on exotic parts for my amp?

yeah, just don't spend it all on tubes

I think some Teflon-coated silver wire would be an excellent investment for one of these.

zingo wrote: »

I think spending $300/each on two coupling caps will be worth the parts budget.

I like your thinking!

pitdogg2 wrote: »

zingo wrote: »

Well it looks nice!

Any initial impressions?

It won't cook marshmallows

That's good, actually -- although EL84s usually run pretty hot at normal Class AB operating points.

It's particularly good if one cannot cook marshmallows on the power transformer.