Inexpensive Tube Amps

I had a yaqin back in 2005. It caught fire and I came close to losing everything. It was a cheap piece of junk and the amp had sharp edges all over it. Cut my hands on it as well. Bought it brand new off the ebay seller in Hong Kong or perhaps China, its too long ago to remember correctly. That was the last Chinese amp I ever owned. It was a hybrid, solid state outputs and tube input. Power transformer and the entire circuit board was burnt to a crisp and that smell lingered in my house for a long time.  It also took out the crossovers in my Vandersteen 2ce speakers.  Richard Vandersteen insisted I played the speakers too loud, until I told him about the amp catching fire.

I was just about to post my concern about safety....   thanks for sharing that Stereo5

@stereo5 , I'm sorry to hear about the terrible experience you had. Not to undermine your story, but on this forum I've read about a PrimaLuna and at least two Jolida amps catching fire.
  So what's a buyer to do regarding Chinese-built amps? Do we consider these occurrences a low percentage of failure and continue to buy Chinese, or do we stop buying these components completely? I don't have the answer, maybe it's buyer beware.

For what its worth, I haven't had any experience with the hybrid designs but the Yaqin amps I've experienced (probably close to a dozen now) have all been solid for the money.  I'd still have no issue buying an all-tube Yaqin if I had a small budget.  Each piece I've experienced was also manufactured after 2005 so perhaps QC has gone up since then.

I own  a Dared I30 tube intergrated amp 35wpc. I bough it 3 years ago from 
 China. I paid $850 shipping inclued .I love it have used it on a number of different speaker set ups.Dyanco A25s ,JBL 230s,JBL H810s,Sono Fabia Lutos .No problems what so ever .Plenty of power ,beauty piece of equipment .I alsio bought a Yashin tube Pre Amp paided about $250 shipping inclued used it with Carver power amps,Sherwood amp,and Marantz  Amps .Never a problem they are all SS amps.Sounds great.