It gives off serious heat, but should easily run the whole day. This thing is dead simple, but well built. Other than tubes, I don't know what could go out on it.
Hi all users, the Miniwatt N3 looks great and tiny but wondering if it is durable & save enough to turn it on for the whole day. Let say, 10 to 12 hours per day?! Of course, good ventilation thoughout the whole working hours!
I went to local Lowe's and bought several pieces of marble slabs and stick-on rubber gripper feet. I use two large piece sandwich for TT, one slab for Dared, one nice piece for Virtue M1. I would imagine it possible to attach MW to a nice piece of rubber-footed marble to add more stability to this puny amp. As a matter of fact I'm going to do this right now: use pieces of rubber tubing glued to the marble slab, "insert" MW feet into those rubber feet - voila!
I was really curious to see how vibration isolation might effect the Miniwatt, but I couldn't easily find anything that worked with such a small component. In the end I tried Herbie vibration rings on all 3 tubes, but didn't notice any changes.
Have you played with isolation at all? Maybe you're more sensible than me and you're just enjoying your music.
I had the same issue with reissue Chinese Gold Lion EL84s dying quickly on the Luxman. They sounded great (briefly) and then I was $200 poorer.
I bought the Create Audio tube upgrade from ALO Audio for the Miniwatt. They seem to be durable and an improvement over the stock tubes.
I also used a power cord and interconnects on the Miniwatt that exceeded the cost of the amplifier by a factor of two. This seems counterintuitive, but I think the Miniwatt merits that sort of consideration.
Most of my listening time is spent in front of this system. My main system is in the livingroom, which is a scene of constant chaos, noise and shouting (anybody having little children will know...).
I listen mostly to classical (Baroque) small ensemble music. This system excels in this particular genre, in my opinion. Open baffles paired with SET produce absolutely gorgeous mids with incredible soundstage and accuracy, even at very low sound levels. Hybrid design of Tekton speakers allows for good bass extension as well. In the picture you can see another Dared amplifier (that uses 6L6 output tubes), I use it when listening to my 80's oldies for better punch, and Tektons do deliver. Virtue Audio Piano M1 is a perfect CD player of this system sound wise, price wise, size wise, and any other wise you can think of.
I tried el84 Mullard re-issues, RCA, Ruby and Tung-Sol signal tube. Currently it has a pair of ShuGuang Psvanne and Tung Sol 12AX7. Have to note that ALL Chinese tubes crapped out within 2 weeks - first one of el84, later 12ax7. Mullard el84 and Ruby 12AX7 sounded good as well. I liked the sound of original ShuGuangs, but their quality scares me.
I bought a Miniwatt to fill in for my Luxman tube amp while it was being repaired. What a surprise it turned out to be. It lacks the remote, multiple inputs and headphone jack of my Luxman, but was a real sonic contender against a piece of gear that cost eight times the price.
