Otomon Labs - WARNING

I’m sorry for the bad experience you have had. I have had multiple heavy amps shipped from Japan without damage (Pioneer M22, also a M25, and several Stax amps). Both came packed with a foam in a can method and seems to be quite durable with great protection. I’m not sure how much more it is to ship with this method, but it creates a custom glove like barrier between the item and box.

 

That photo is a great illustration of a lack of attention to detail... wish that had been in the first post. Actually, can't believe it survived as well as it did. In that kind of packaging, I would have expected dents, busted knobs, etc.
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"foam in a can" - that's actually a great idea. He already wrapped it in saran wrap. Buy a $8 can of window/door expanding foam insulation and spray the inside. It doesn't expand as much as "regular" foam in a can so you don't have to worry about blowing the box apart.

 

Yeah....that packaging is horrible for an amp that has to weigh over 30 lbs. Yikes. That's how I would ship a Bottlehead Crack that weighs 6 lbs. I'm surprised it arrived in one piece, and not multiple pieces.

 

On the contrary, thanks for the updates, Do please continue to post them until the whole sorry business is completely finished.

Does this mean you are less likely to get your money refunded? I thought that Ken had agreed to pay it, leaving you to swallow the return cost?

 

@rhythmdevils that shipping photo is exceptionally disturbing. If I had received a custom amp that way I would be a very unhappy individual. Thank-you for the warnings.

 

No it just affects me in the future. And I contacted PayPal and told them it was just a glitch in their automated system because this was 1 item paid for in 3 payments and their automatic flagging system was reading it as 3 items all at once. but they didn't care and could not do anything. So from now on, I have to pay a fee for every dispute until I go some time without any disputes. Really infuriating given that I've been a PayPal user for 20 years, I use PayPal for basically every online transaction outside amazon and I buy countless tubes on ebay. I use PayPal a lot, and have been or 20 years, and I have never filed a dispute before this, yet suddenly I am high risk because of one defective product. Paypal is really messed up. I'm wanting got switch to Apple Pay and Zelle as much as possible going forward unless I need the buyer protection.

 

Just contact PayPal. Their policy is on the percentage of claims filed against you in the previous 3 months (so the 20 year history does not matter). If you are below the threshold (2-3%?) they’ll likely walk this back. If you are above the threshold just wait and it should go down by itself.

Annoying? Yes. Just like a business relationship with visa/Mastercard/Amex. Except you don’t have a human account rep to smooth things with.

 

Yeah I'd hope PayPal does the right thing once you get your case in front of actual human eyes and not what was likely an algorithmic decision.

That shipping job is indeed atrocious for a 30lb amp shipped internationally. No wonder this dude's amps frequently get loose parts/solder joints giving way/etc. with international customers, as reported in that HiFi Heaven thread. Could even happen if he had shipped that way domestically.

Foam injection/molding is definitely a cool, effective packing method. When I bought my Studio B used from The Music Room, the original user either lost the original power supply box or Music Room felt it was too risky to ship with in the condition it was in, so they shipped it in a new box with their foam injection machine. They did the same thing with a fairly heavy power conditioner I bought from them a year or two ago, works really well. And this was from Colorado to California, not across the Pacific!

 

I don't know if he still does but 14 years ago Ty from Tyler Acoustics shipped his speakers using foam injection/molding. My first "audiophile" speakers were a pair of Tyler Linbrook Signature floorstanders. He shipped those things via FedEX and the foam still managed to protect them.

 

New to the forum so I thought I'd share my experience with Ken.

I bought a 801A amp from him last year. It arrived undamaged. It worked for 2 days and then kept blowing fuses at turn on. Wrecked 2 SR fuses that way. Ken was pleasant at first, try this, try that. Use a different rectifier. None of it worked. After 3 or 4 e-mail exchanges he stopped responding. Just completely ghosted me. I refused to spend big bucks to send it back to Japan. Fortunately for me I found a great tube tech locally (I lived in S. Florida at the time). He said he'd look at it and thought he could repair it. Of course no info on it, no schematic, Ken wouldn't tell me anything. The tech spent a lot of time on it and traced it to a bad diode. It was way undersized for the circuit he said. He also repaired a couple of bad solder joints. Has worked fine since then (no jinx). It actually sounds unbelievably good and lifelike. There's the rub.

I know a number of people that have bought his amps. They have confirmed that his soldering skills are atrocious and all of them have had to have it repaired by local techs. He also uses a hodgepodge of parts, many of them lower value that the circuit would need. I will give Ken credit for being an innovative designer, but he is kind of a mad scientist and his stuff is going to break. You just don't know when so you better be able to find a good tube tech. I found him terribly unprofessional to have ghosted me because I had the audacity to complain about a product that crapped out in 2 days. If you ever see an Otomon piece for resale, inquire whether or not a local tech had fixed Ken's mistakes. If they have and the amp works, it will probably sound good. Reliability, not so much.

I have since found a very reliable, talented builder in Vietnam. The 211 amps I bought are fantastic, and robust. They weren't cheap but they work. Just my experience. YMMV.

 

Jesus this guy's a piece of work.

 

p.s. I am one of the guys in the Hi-Fi Heaven thread.

 

Just as long as it isn't Felitsa, aka Tran, aka Thuan, aka Lil Knight.....

 

My friend just bought a similar headphone amp from Soundgate using 2A3 for the output with 12AX7 as the driver. The sound is good but he complain unacceptable hum and he will bring it to me for repair or modification. From my experience when building these headphone amplifier the filament of these direct heat tubes such as 300B and 2A3 must be supplied with well filtered DC and the only and best solution will be using regulator such as LM338 etc in order to get a pure and stable dc supply. These regulators will give AC ripple down to 2-3 mV, and together with a well filtered high voltage supply for the output and driver tubes, you shall expect to get an output hum less than 0.3mV. At such level the hum will not be noticeable on most headphones that I had tested.
From the web of soundgate audio, the photos showing the interior of the amplifier that quoted I can only see very simple dc supply circuit for the 300B tubes, and there is a hum pot for the adjustment of minimum hum. The lowest hum level you can get with such design will be around 2-3mV at the transformer output which is quite acceptable when using speakers as the load, but not sufficiently low enough when driving a headphone.
I hope that my idea can be helpful.

 

DHT folks are highly divided on the filament supply type and each camp thinks that their approach is the least evil among the other approaches. But yea it gets quite tricky for headphones if you are not going with regulated DC. Ken from what I heard prefers AC for the most part. The Otomon 45 amp that I own uses raw AC. The headphone out is wired to the 4 Ohm tap of the OPT, which probably has a windings ratio of 35:1. Apart from this step-down, the amp also has feedback and I think both help to lower the hum to almost negligible levels. What I don’t know is if feedback is worse than DC supply or vice versa.

 

The 2A3 tube has a filament voltage of 2.5V and therefore it is more forgiving to use AC filament heating. Comparing to the loading of 16 ohms, the 4 ohm loading cut the hum level by half, and with some feedback it can reduce a further half, resulting a hum level of about 0.5mV which is quite acceptable. Though most of the headphones have impedance 30 ohms onwards they works quite alright on 16 ohms output. I never try them on 4 ohms output but I think there should be not much difference in practical use. Though the difference in impedance seems big.

 

The use of feedback affect the damping factor of the amplifier which is quite noticeable on the control of the woofer on speakers. I wonder if it can be heard or noticed on headphones which has only a small diaphragm.