A year ago today we received our first shipment of the Limited Edition Elekit TU-8300R 300B Single Ended Tube Amp Kit and were nothing short of impressed.  By February we had decided to have one custom painted then assembled here in order to be able to give a solid and honest review of the amplifier.  Once parts were back from the paint booth in a candy apple red we convinced a longtime friend of the company, who had no previous amp building experience, to assist in the assembly.  This gave us a chance to see exactly how “Do It Yourself” this kit really was and what it would take for a newbie to assemble.  Not only did he successfully complete the TU-8300R without losing a finger or burning the place down, it came out sounding fabulous.  He provided us with a full review of the kit building experience for us to share and hasn’t stopped talking about it since.

As much as we hope people will take our word on how amazing and versatile this amplifier is we knew some outside reviews would be helpful so our Red Amp went on tour.  First stop was to Frank Fazzalari of Coherent Audio who was thoroughly impressed.  Frank immediately hooked the Elekit up into his personal home listening room and we spent several hours enjoying various power tubes through it.  We left it with him for quite sometime and wondered if we might have to wrestle him to get it back.  Several months later Frank featured it along with his speakers at the TAVES Consumer Electronics show.  Jon and I spent a day at the show with Frank and his wife and the reaction from the show was exactly as we expected, fully impressed listeners.

“This is the best sounding amp I have lived with.
Last year I had an Audion SILVER NIGHT 300B and this unit kept up with it in power and sonics.
Best kept secret in tube audio. Sell your $2K to 6K amps and buy 2 or more.” – Frank Fazzalari, Coherent Audio

The next stop on our tour was to Noam Bronstein from wallofsound.ca.  As someone who makes audio product reviews a profession, we knew he would provide very honest feedback.  Again we started by spending several hours with Noam listening to various tracks through his home system before leaving it in his hands to play with.  He too was very impressed and you can find his entire review on the Wall of Sound site.

“This is truly one of the easiest reviews I’ve had to write. Elekit’s TU-8300R is a flat-out spectacular bargain. I wholeheartedly recommend it, and giving it our Gold Star Award is a no-brainer. Many thanks to thetubestore for the chance to have “the red amp” on extended loan. Save one for me!” – Noam Bronstein, Wall of Sound

Our final stop was to David Abramson who published his review for Stereo Times.  Another impressed listener and fabulous review of what we already know to be an amazing product.

“This 300B tube amplifier certainly defied my expectations of the breed in a very good way from hour one.  Since it’s a low-powered, single-ended 300B tube amp, let me count the ways in which it upended my limited expectations and premeditated “of courses.”” – David Abramson, Stereo Times

Here we are one year later after many many hours of listening, significant travel time, and lots of tube rolling still thrilled with this amp.  Sales have been remarkable which means stock has gotten very low, as a matter of fact today we are almost out.  Being a Limited Edition product we knew this time would come but we are hopeful that we might convince Elekit to release it again.

To those who got in early and picked up this amazing DIY kit we say congratulations and we hope you are in love with your amp as much as we are with ours.  For the rest of you… what are you waiting for?  Get one while you still can!