Just pulled them out of the box. These are beautiful looking amps, clsassic metallic silver finish, tastefully done and the Treasure tubes, CV181-Z input voltage multiplier, 300B-Z driver tube and the Shuguang 845B power tubes.

Matching S200MK Tube pre-amp, no treasure inside but gold label 12AX7, 12AU7, EL84 and another that I forget at the moment.

Initial sound, did they forget a zero on the power output?, rated at 28 watts SET Class A, I haven't got it above 1/3 volume, it is really loud on my 88db MBS-1 speakers.

Right off the top the soundstage was stunning and a beautiful lush midrange. Big bottle tubes Bass a little mushy and treble is biting, but this is normal on a new amp and tubes.

Checked and adjusted the bias to 85ma (operating range 80 to 90 ma), haven't touched the 300B or 845 AC offset adjustments yet. This adjustment made the amp much more listenable, bass is tighter.

I'll report more as changes occur. All of a half hour on them now. Source is CD-1000 and TubeDAC-09.

hmm, imaging is already better placed, the layering is already started. I really can't believe this is only 28 watts. Amazing amp, might even give Rita a run for my favourite.




Cheers,
Ian

Ian;

Nice looking but please forgive my ignorance but I cannot see any tubes in the photos or even where they would go.



Cheers

My fault, should have included a product shot:

Two mono blocks side by side.



Cheers,
Ian

Hey Ian.

Double check the power supply on these monoblocks, they are way underatted also there is no soft start circuitry which will take its toll on the tubes.
We brought in a few of these monoblock when we where trying to market them 5 years ago.
I can see the innards are the same as back in the days, we had gotten a digital display installed in the front of the units to make user biasing easier.
The negative feedback for both the 300D driver and 845B tubes are kind of a pain in the %?*.
These unit once broken in sound very nice, bass i nice an palpable, with an open and transparent midrange that you would expect an 845 monoblock to achieve.
The caps in the power supply are underated like i mentioned , the caps are 450V kinds in this system you would need 600V caps to be safe, i had these checked out by a tube tech in T.O and said that it would be too hard to clamp down the design.
In china 600V caps are hard to source and that is why they where using 450V which is the highest value they can get off the shelf in big numbers.
I kept using these because they sounded good, after 6 months i noticed that the caps where starting to bulge in the center( about to burst) because they where underated for the application.

Below is a show report from rick Becker of enjoy the music showing the shuguang 845B amp at FSI 2006 we had on display.

http://www.enjoythemusic.com/montreal2006/becker/page4.htm

These are nice sounding amps but make sure that you look at any design issues before marketing if you are planning to do so Ian.

Hey Ian.

If you have a chance could you show picture of the innards of the pre-amp if possible.

Cheers, Nick

Exploding caps are not good Nick couldn't you get 600V caps? What's on your's Ian?

Hey peppapig.

It was not only the caps that where at fault, the whole power supply would have needed to be designed from the ground up.
Like mentionned also a soft start circuitry would of needed to be applied to the design, 845 based amplifiers are very finicky to design.
One thing we noticed is that the amps where more comfortable at bench test having 100 volt input trough a variac that the North american 120Volt standard....too much issues too much money spent ad had to close the books unfortunatly on importing shuguang into Canada.
I blew quite a few tubes on these, the standard 845B tubes we where getting from the factory where not super expensive but i gather those new treasure series are quite more expensive, also blowing tubes in an amp is not very good for the trannies.
Shuguang use to manufacure(OEM) jolida products before they split, they had a joint business affair for a few years in the late 90's to 2001/2002.
Jolida products flooded the market in the U.S, making them one of the first chinese audio manufacturer redifining tube gear at an affordable cost for audiophiles.
Shuguang stayed on the asian market, you can find their products in guandong and a few other place in China .
Thats is why some older Jolida models to be first brought on the U.S market it tha end of the 90's like the 101/ 202/302/502 integrated amplifiers have the Jolida SG denomination, SG being Changsha Shuguang factory production.

Your right. It sounds like way too many issues to deal with. I can see why you stopped importing Shuguang because of it's flaws. I just hope Ian has delt with these somehow. I wonder if any revisions were made at all?

well it was 95% designed by domestic engineers, so it should be OK.....

Design needs to be applied in an appropriate matter.
Even the best designs that are supposed to be foulproof when done with rather poors parts and with shortcuts can become quite unstable.

Geeze, the last thing I want is a bomb in my living room

Sonicaly these amps where really nice, anyone who has heard class A 845 /211 and 805 triode based amps....its hard to get that midrange purity and luminosity, voices are projected to the forefront and instrument blooms with a liquidi flow, if the power supply is adequate the bass can be very well textured with good slam, quite an experience.
I was about to send a pair to david Khan who reviews for 6 Moons audio....i thought at their price point they where a good deal, after speaking and e-mailing him i decided to back off due to the problems we encoutered with the amps while in the process of marketing...i was torn up trust me!
I had Omer from Unity audio who wanted to be a dealer after i had contacted him about how good these amps where and i felt i dissapointed him, he was so wanting to have the line and i just could not follow up due to all the issues we had.
Omer i owe you a few beers, will you come to the show this year? hope to see you there and many more!!

Nick,

What were they going to sell for when you dropped them? C$ is stronger against the US$ now than it was then, and as you say, there is no change in the unit, so the price should be the same or perhaps lower now.

Thanks for the info, you had the 2nd generation that had the power supply designed by an English firm. Shuguang is on the the 5th generation now, dropping just about everything from the 2nd and 3rd generations (as I was told, never seen them) and we have tested 2 other amps in the series for NA at 115v +/- 10% and all is fine. The 845 is going thru 2 sets of safety tests with our techs. 450v caps is common for these amps, running them at 100v with a variac is going to cause damage as it was outside of the Brit's design, even for a few minutes. But I will have double check on the 845. I have the pre-amp pics on another camera.

Soft start ups are fine until they fail which is a problem with HV soft starts, these have a 30 second pre-heat since the last generation, seems fine. The tubes can take a normal start, what the tubes can't take is shipping. We have dropped all the Chinese big bottle tubes for now, they have made them sound great but they can't survive our crap NA shipping methods, in China you get them hand delivered.

Shuguang is one of the largest tube amp part manufactures in the world, it is easy for them to get whatever capacitor they want, to say otherwise is just your opinion and not much of one in my opinion ! The Shuguang amps aren't getting my name put on them, they offered. I like the ones that already have my name on them. Shuguang has been making tube amps since 1981.

Jolida does not represent what Shuguang can do, enough said.

Like you, I heard the 845s and went holy sh.., and posted, Rachel has already told me that I can only sell them local or without tubes. I just wanted to share what I was hearing and hopefully others will have a look at 845 amps as an option for bigger power SET. I also have the Opera Consonance Cyber 211 (which can also run 845 tubes with a simple bias change). I don't sell these at the moment either, they are twice the price of the Shuguangs, just amazed at what I heard off the top and after a few hours and the Treasure tubes need 150 to 300 hours to burn in.

Again thanks for the info. Look forward to seeing you in Montreal.

Cheers,
Ian

...oh...I see...thanks...