Cayin A88T break in and biasing??

Yep, your friends are right. You need to be able to handle biasing and, for me anyway, not being able to do it with the amp in place and connected to everything would be a PITA. Personally I prefer manual biasing amps which come with exposed bias pots and a meter built in. Easy, dead simple, and a good system to both control tube sound as well as to know how much life they have lost as time goes by.

I've never heard the Cayin but all amps/power tubes do require breaking in. Power tubes and tube amps can require anywhere up to 100 hours to really approach their best.

I'm sure that you have already read reviews and user comments on this amp. I have not noticed anyone comfirming that this amp is 'tube like' if your expectation of a tube amp is old fashioned warmth.

BTW, I recently read a similar post by another owner of a Cayin KT88. You might find it by looking into the archives.

No biasing needed. Changing out the tubes is plug-and-play. This is also why you can switch between triode and ultralinear on the fly - a great feature.

Why put another $1000 of tubes into it? You don't even know what you have yet. Judge it after a couple weeks of continuous play and see what you think of it then. Just relax and enjoy.

Arthur

Hi Aball & Newbee,

Thanks for the reply's so far. Aball, The $1000 I will
have to spend is not for the tubes, but the difference
between it and the Jolida I took back to my local dealer.

BTW, My comments were based upon owners reading of the manufacturer's actual manual on your amp, not on the statements by dealers that they were auto-biasing. To clear up any conflict between two opposing posts I would suggest you obtain and read the amps manual. You might look at all of the various comments that a Google search can provide which includes professional reviews as well as user comments.

This amp is NOT AUTOBIASING. I owned a Jolida 302 also and now the a88t and it needs at least 10 hours breakin before sound improves.

Here's the biasing instructions graciously provided to me by another Cayin owner:

"Unless you swap out tubes, you do not need to bias the amp more than once every few months. Anytime you change tubes however, you must re-bias.
If you can go to the Acoustic Sounds web site and enter Cayin in your search...you will find the A-88T and can click on that model. Then find hi-res pics that show the underside of the amp and it’s circuits. It will be a big help if you can look at the picture on the Acoustic Sounds site before you start to see “what’s what”.
Be careful of course when doing this. Be certain the amp is turned up on its side (supported by something) - The amp needs to be up on it's side and plugged in, but no interconnect or speaker cables should be connected- it should just be plugged into the wall....

Okay, the directions:
You will see under the tube sockets where the wires are soldered. You will
also see the blue plastic pots (with screwdriver slots on their tops) next
to the sockets.

You want to use the blue wires on the front two Kt-88 (front of amp) and
use the Orange wires on the rear two Kt-88's as your + test points. They
are the only wires that are single wires on the sockets and have a double
solder connect. The second soldered connect (with NO wire attached) is the
test point for the + Positive probe of your multi-meter...The - Negative
test probe attaches to any black (- neg.) speaker terminal on the rear
binding post. Doesn't matter which one.

The test point is 0.4V or 400mV on your meter. Make sure to set it for
Volts or mVolts DC- NOT Amps or Voltage AC. I use a Sperry DM 4100A
meter purchased from Home Depot or Lowe's.

This may seem a bit confusing. But if you pop the bottom cover, you'll see
the KT-88 sockets from the bottom- then locate the Blue (front of amp) and
orange wire (rear of amp) and you will also see the 4- blue plastic pots for
adjustments. One by each tube socket. It won’t take much turning to find
the 0.4V...Adjust slowly with the probe on the test point and you'll see that.


Allow it to warm up for about 10mins before checking the bias. After
you've made the initial adjustments, wait 10 mins. and check again for drift.

They will settle a bit, but not a lot. You can fine adjust at this point"

Having said that, don't judge your amp untl you get it some time to really burn-in or perhaps tube role.