Spoiler: Would I recommend buying a Line Magnetic product? Not when you are in Germany or Austria.
I don’t know how the customer support in the United States is, but my customer journey with the Line Magnetic LM-503PA Mono Vacuum Tube Amps in Vienna is terrible.
In the Summer of 2021, I spent 10k on a pair of Line Magnetic LM-503PA mono vacuum tube amps. This was by far my worst decision in 40 years of buying hi-fi gear.
So far, I have enjoyed listening with the amps for 11 months. But for 5 months, I couldn’t enjoy listening with the amps because of defects and ridiculous customer support. As I’m writing this, my Line Magnetic LM-503PA is defective at the distributor for repair for more than four weeks, and Line Magnetic has not even sent the missing spare parts from China to Germany yet. But this is just the tip of the iceberg of my terrible customer experience with a Line Magnetic product.
This is why I wrote a customer report about my journey with the Line Magnetic LM-503PA mono vacuum tube amp. The report is about many customer-unfriendly emails, a dealer who doesn’t answers emails at all, the European Line Magnetic distributor holding my amp hostage, and Line Magnetic in China refusing to answer my questions.
From the story alone i would not buy anything.
But even without the story, i would not buy anything without a local (country) basic store.
In case of warranty or repair issues. They would handle it or face the consumer protection laws that are pretty good here.
It and these products most likely is ‘all in China’ imported stuff by some 3party.
Things like this can happen.
And we have good Tubes and amps available in EU region so would not buy them anyways. the more expensive the more it needs to be from local / country and probably not have PRC / China mentioned anywhere. But That’s just me.
Hopefully some suitable outcome will come to you in the end… when ever it will be.
Tube amps can do some strange stuff depending on the failure. I have a well know amp from a reputable vendor. A tube short circuited, drew a lot of current and burnt up a grid resistor. Loud pop, smell on burning component. No warning etc.
When tubes go bad or bad things happen with a tube…it can take out stuff very quickly.
In my issue the amp was made in the USA and I am in the USA and I got the destroyed components and replaced the part and bought a new set of tubes,…all is ok.
Even fused this failure was not detected by the main power fuse.
Slowly over time I have shed my tube amps…just got tired of their heat and maintenance…
YMMV…
Advice buy locally from a reputable dealer that will take care of you when poop happens!
10K for something made in China sounds insane to me to start with. I can’t even make myself let go of $1K for something made in China. I get a lot of $5 to $20 type stuff made in China.