Anyone have honest opinion of Jolida amps?


Want to join ranks of tube/hybred owners but with a modest budget. I need advice. Wondering if the Jolida integrateds are any good. Seem to be a lot for sale. Also seems many reviews at Audio Review website may have been written by dealers (pity if its true). Looking for honest opinions and suggetions for this audio novice. THANKS.
dakajoba
If you replace the original Chinese tubes with at least Russian ones you'll have a descent amp for the money spent.
Imagine that you're buying a tube amp without the tubes -- that's how you should buy Jolida.
I owned a Jolida intergrated amp for about three years. Stock tubes are just OK, I changed the tubes and actualy got it to sound very good. Biasing was a little tough but I got it done. Build quality was not the best, some of the sockets didn't sit straight and the powder coating on the base had a few tiny bubbles. Of course none of this had any effect on the sound which I found to be very enjoyable. The amp was 60 watts and drove a pair of Obelisk quite well. Another intergrated thak can be had at kind of a bargin price is the Aranov. You'll have to spend good money to do better and should you deside to, there is always a market for it and no I'm not a dealer for any of these products, I've just owned them.
I owned an early version of the SJ202a, hand wired before the PCB went in'em. Ok little amp, pretty, nice external build, and biasing can be fun for someone just learning about amps, but its tubes and marketing hype, and not worth the money. Alot spent just making it look pretty like most tube gear. Granted alot of tube amps may actually sound nicer than many solid-state designs, for various reasons, but solid-state does it better and for less when well engineered. The jolida was an improvement from my H/K unit (I sold my NAD earlier so never heard the two at the same time) but for the money of one of the jolida's, there is better. Try these sealelectronics.com
Hmm: I like the 302A and 302B amps. They just require better tubes and a decent power cord to perform best. The power cord replacement could be a stock Belden 14 gage (nothing expensive or fancy). What I would do though is try to purchase a new one with a warranty (hopefully @ a discount) as the few hundred dollars more will be well spent if there is a defect or problem. I do not care for 6550 based amps (the 500 series) and therefore prefer the 300 series (based on EL34 output tubes). I have not listened to their Hybrid models. What is the rest of your system right now (tell the truth:-) and the size of your listening room? It is possible that your speakers are not tube friendly (even with 50 watts). Sound wise the 302B that I auditioned was comparable to my old Dynaco ST70/Pas3x rig (better @ the frequency extremes, though it did not have a phono stage) and offered a classic tube sound. The output tubes were by Svetlana (you could probably do even better for the same $) and I cannot recall what signal tubes were used. The power cord was an HT Pro 11 that I supplied. I would much rather listen to this amp than all except a few budget SS amps, so in this respect I have somewhat of an opposite take than that of Ezmeralda. The only thing that it will not supply is super deep controlled bass, but this should be of little concern if one is not using full range speakers. Even with full range speakers, I found the bass to be adequate and well balanced (just don't expect it to sound like a $5k Plinius power amp in the low registers).