[Amps] AL-82 VS Acom 1000

[Jim Brown]

On Sun,8/21/2016 10:14 AM, Kevin wrote:
> making amps with Chinese tubes

Let's remember that China is a COUNTRY, not a COMPANY. Lots of "stuff" 
that is pretty well regarded for quality is made by US COMPANIES in 
factories that are in China. That "stuff" includes most, if not all, 
Apple and Lenovo products (and IBM's Thinkpad line was made in China 
before IBM sold it to the company that is now Lenovo). As I hear the 
story, Rigol products are made/sold by the Chinese company that 
sub-contracted the mfg of HP/Agilent equipment, but the Rigol scope and 
spectrum analyzer I own are nowhere near the quality of HP/Agilent.

There's lots of junk coming from every country -- there were a couple of 
decades when Detroit's cars fell apart far sooner that they should have, 
which is how JA companies making high quality cars (like Toyota and 
Honda) got a foothold in the US. The main reason that much less junk 
comes from the US today is that it's much cheaper to make junk somewhere 
else. :)

About 10 years ago, one of my pro audio colleagues who is an excellent 
engineer (EE is far too limiting to define his expertise) decided to 
import a line of microphones from a Chinese company for sale to churches 
with contemporary music worship, and began with an order of modest size. 
He measured all of them in his lab, and furnished calibration curves to 
the customer! That first batch was pretty decent, so he ordered more, 
which when they arrived didn't measure nearly as well nor as 
consistently as the first order. As anyone who has ever worked in mfg 
knows, consistency of conformance with product specs is awfully 
important, and separates the good companies from the bad ones.

73, Jim K9YC