Tube Town 5a3?

[Ledvedder5150]

I'm wondering if anyone has any experience with the particular kit from Tube Town? https://www.tube-town.net/cms/?DIY/Amps ... KII&normal

I like the idea of the switchable mods that it offers. I realize it isn't a true "handwired" replica, since it's using a pcb, but that's not a big deal to me.

[yaanno]

I believe these mods are basically a sum of Rob Robinette's favourite mods. I don't have experience with this particular kit, but their kit designs in general vary in quality. If the PCB is designed and produced well, imo there is no reason to disregard them. Component wise most of the kits are on the fair side, nothing fancy but good enough, standard stuff (carbon film resistors, regular film caps, JJ reservoir and filter caps). Switches and tube sockets are great, good transformers. Tubes they include in the kits are on the ok side, nothing problematic, affordable.

If the price is good, why not go for it? If you look forward to the build experience and a good but not amazing sounding amp. TAD offers one in a higher price point but those kits are better quality. To me the TT stuff is good enough and more affordable (I'm on the budget usually but who doesn't?).

Not sure if this helps, just wanted to put it out, you get what you pay for (on the plus and minus side too).

[Stephen1966]

Living in Europe, i do a lot of business with Tube Town and I've always had a good experience with them. They are usually supportive as long as you don't hit them with too many sophisticated problems. English probably isn't their first language. If you order from them, do an inventory of the kit parts as soon as possible. I order a lot from them so mistakes have happened in the past. Whenever I had a problem though, they resolved it very quickly.

The kits tend to be light on instruction and generally require you to have some skills with reading schematics and following the layouts which are typically clear and generally, easy to understand. It helps if you are a black belt at IKEA. The parts might not always be high end but are generally sufficient. They might have some recommendations if you ask them. I don't personally know this kit though it's based on the 5E3. The "reduced" .047uF coupling caps between the phase splitter and the power tubes along with a 220k grid stopper performing double duty as a voltage divider is going to help control the gain hitting the PI and reduce the tendency for distortion. That, and it uses a lower gain 12AY7 in the first stage. The pentode/triode operation option is a matter of taste for some. The tone stack shenanigans on the normal channel add a little bit of versatility to the waveform shaping. A lot of people spend the majority of their time in the Bright channel of the 5E3 though there's nothing to stop you dialling the Normal channel back and using for harp if you pair it up with guitar in the bright channel. That could work.