Vacuum tube based amplifiers have been making a significant comeback over the past 10 years or so, they were ubiquitous before the invention of the transistor – which due to its low cost and ease of manufacture quickly replaced tubes in almost all applications. The reason vacuum tubes have seen such a return to favour is slightly controversial (as is everything in the world of the audiophile), but many peer-reviewed studies have shown conclusively the tube amplifiers do have significant benefits over their solid state relatives.
As with most things in the field of high-end stereos, tube amps are expensive – usually eye-wateringly so. One of the most effective and entertaining ways of avoiding a lot of the associated costs is to buy a kit and spend an afternoon in the shed with a soldering iron, you’ll save a tonne of money over a shop bought amp and you’ll be able to rest assured that the assembly was done properly. This kit contains everything you need to build the Elekit TU-8200 Stereo Tube Amp – all you need to complete it is plenty of solder and a healthy dose of patience.
Articles that Ben has written have been covered on CNN, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, Autoweek Magazine, Wired Magazine, Autoblog, Gear Patrol, Jalopnik, The Verge, and many more.
Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
