I’ve wanted to listen to a tube amp for ages. Everyone says tube amps are super classy, mostly because they supposedly have this amazing “flavor.” So I got together with a high school buddy to figure out how to put one together. He said the circuit and soldering should be fine—schematics are all over the internet—and the tubes are no problem either, you can just buy ready-made ones. Solder it up using the public mold designs online… So I placed the order. We’d agreed to do the soldering together, but last month his master’s thesis defense was such a pain and kept him so busy that I let him start on his own. When he finished, he said: after soldering it with someone else’s board, someone else’s case, someone else’s power supply, and someone else’s tubes, it ended up exactly the same as the finished units other people sell. So why not just buy a finished one? Yeah… for something this cheap, why not just buy a finished one?