We’ll, placed my order a few days ago, have yet to even make it to the list, the list is over 800 now, so I placed an add on several forums for used. We’ll, I found a taboo mk iv with all the bells and whistles. Guess I’ll know next Monday (week to ship from the east coast) how the taboo sounds with the csp-3, Yggy and Eikon.
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I was on the list then decided to look elsewhere. I’m a ZMF fan so i went for an A&S product. I hope I won’t regret it…
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You won’t regret it, Justin has great amps. I’ve heard the Mogwai SE, Bigger Ben and Nautilus with the Eikon, Aeolus, VC and VO. They all work well. I went up the A&S chain till I hit the Nautilus and found it was a little too much. Went solid state and found it wasn’t enough. Found the CSP-3 which was a nice happy medium, great flexibility, just the ability to change the gain on the left and right channel to tune your volume window to your headphone, I really enjoy. The Decware is super quiet. I hear my Yggy over the CSP. They all have they’re pro’s and con’s. The Decware leans towards Russian tubes that for now, are abundant but A&S uses more common tubes. A&S has more power but is more sensitive to it’s environment. I can keep my iphone next to the CSP and it doesn’t pick up any noise. I ran the phone over the amp, no noise. I did the same to the A&S, it picks up the phone with noise. They’re both good choices just Decware is harder to get.
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I’ll second and agree w/ similar experiences to everything @Roikyou stated. Both builders offer excellent products at their respective price points on each piece.
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Which amp did you get?
I ordered the Kensie Ovation
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Great amp. I have a Kenzie, and a Kenzie Encore. NOS Tubes are still pretty easy to find at fair prices.
My experience with getting tubes for Decware so far in regards to the Russian output tubes are still easy to get (these are the tubes the amps were designed around), around $10 a tube and sound good in my opinion but there are easy to get EL84 tubes, new and nos. Uses common rectifier tubes, 5u or 5ar, same as A&S and the input tubes are common but also uses 274b. The input tube is the 6922 and again, new or nos are common and available. So don’t think tubes are hard or difficult to get, hopefully I didn’t make it sound that way.
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Nope. I swore up, down, and sideways I was not going to get another tube amp. I sold my last one years ago. So off I go!
Re: NOS tubes. “NOS” has been tossed around a lot. Back awhile, NOS meant “New old stock” tubes that were made during ww2 era, that were used in radios, etc. (Mullards, Telefunken, the “Heerlin factory”) Is that still the case or has the definition changed? I’m asking because IMHO these tubes should be long-gone or really expensive. I mean, how many really new old stock tubes can be sitting around???
Thoughts?
It still means New Old Stock, but in practice there’s no way to verify the history of a specific item. Things get passed around and used a little or a lot by many owners. So, I interpret it as “Vintage, in good cosmetic condition and with good test numbers” today.
NOS now also means non-oversampling in the DAC world.
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It does make you wonder where they keep finding these at. You take it for a grain of salt that they are “new” from the 50’s, 60’s or whenever. Or as generic said, in good cosmetic condition. Who knows how many hours are on them and how many hours they have left. Could be 5k, 10k or ready to go any time. I’ve got a box full for my amp and amp inbound to keep me entertained probably for years honestly. Just need not to sell either one and just enjoy them. We’ll see.
flip side of the coin, China and Russia keeps making new versions of tubes. I don’t think they’re that bad sounding but the vintage usually sounds better or should at least.
I see a lot of people on forums advertising or referring to vintage tubes as NOS. Eg. - “I’m selling this amplifier with NOS tubes, I’ve only used them for a couple hundred hours.”
… If you’ve used them, they are not NOS. They are used vintage tubes. I think people do that because they didn’t bother to find out what NOS stands for in the first place.
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There are guys with buildings full of tubes. I used to deal with ESRC vacuum tubes in Florida. The owner was an old gent and he died last year. He had pretty much anything you wanted. For Branding (mostly domestic) you’d have to ask for specifically what you wanted. If he had it then you’d get it. Otherwise, it would be RCA, GE, or Sylvania. He didn’t test most tubes up front, but if you had a bad one, you’d let him know and a replacement would be shipped. Flea bay has some good tube sellers, but some flakes too. I stick to sellers who offer test results (TV 7 testers preferred) and have near perfect feedback with good volume. I have a tester, and my experience is those guys are usually dead on with their results.
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Congratulations on the 2 amps. What magic trick did you pull to get those in less than a month…
Got lucky and found the csp3 anniversary on audio mart. Then i decided to put in an order for the taboo and figured while i waited to put in the Decware forum an ad looking for the taboo and couple days later i got a reply from someone on the waiting list waiting got a speaker amp and was ready to get rid of a taboo with all the bells and whistles. Steve let me out of the order since the queue was 800.
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Not only do you have a nice HP combo, go ahead and grab yourself a pair of Omega speakers and you have a sweet 2 channel set up, especially for a desktop, or small to medium sized room 
(There are plenty of other speakers too, I just happen to use those as a reasonable cost example)
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I use headphones so i don’t annoy my wife. Maybe some day I’ll pick up speakers.
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So, 25 days later and I was close to letting one or both go but they’re sticking around for a little while. Let’s see where I’m at in another 30 days.
I was talking with someone about these amps and here are my thoughts about them so far compared to the amps I’ve used prior to Decware.
I’ve only tried Ampsandsound and Auris out of Europe besides Decware. A&S (short for Ampsandsound moving forward) has the power over Auris, Auris has the refinement and quiet, A&S, again, has the power and it delivers it in the way that the bass hits, the resolution, just across the board very good. But, Amps has the most noise, from text messages to your phone moving towards the amps. I’m guessing with the power comes the ability to pick up everything around it. The Nautilus is the most quiet, followed by Bigger Ben and then the nosiest that I heard was the mogwai se. Decware doesn’t have the power of A&S but it’s quiet like the Auris but delivers better sound than the Auris and on par for most part with A&S. Decware is the middle of the road in regards to power. The KT88 and 6550 that the Bigger Ben and Nautilus use are of course better and more powerful than the EL84 variant the Taboo uses but the Taboo delivers very good sound.
Both Auris and A&S operate at 100% in regards to gain. You have a small window of how much of your volume window you can use based on your comfort level. Auris is very quiet and refined but lacks in the ability to delivery power like the A&S but that’s a given. With the CSP and the Taboo, you have more flexibility than A&S and Auris would know what to do with. You can control the gain, output voltage, left, right channel and something neither amp has, lucid mode, the ability to play the left channel on the right side and vice versa. you can control how much each channel plays on the other channel.
A&S has better flexibility for what tubes to use, so if you want to go down the rabbit hole and tube roll, A&S is the way to go. Auris, only the input tube, no rectifier option. Decware has the next best tube rolling and a lot of options. Between the CSP and the Taboo, you have eight tubes, Nautilus has five tubes, ha-2sf has five but not very flexible as the output tubes only has one Russian option. The Auris and Decware were built around Russian tubes, so, maybe there’s something to building amps around these tubes.
Auris does not have speaker options. The Decware and A&S does. The Decware has a sub-woofer option where the A&S does not (not that I’m familiar with). I have yet to hear speakers on Decware or A&S but as I’ve said, there is a said synergy using speakers with the Taboo and CSP3. Here’s is one example where the left and right channel would be a benefit. If a speaker is a different distance, you have the option to change the volume level, evening out that sound level that might be disproportionate. I was watching a movie the other day with headphones, one side was a little heavy, that’s easy to correct. I like having the dual volume.
Price. Taboo, mogwai se and ha-2sf (taboo with all bells and whistles hits the same price point). Taboo and Mogwai are neck and neck for sound but the Taboo is almost half the footprint with lucid mode and left and right channel plus a super quiet amp. The Taboo is my go to, followed by mogwai se and then Auris. Don’t get me wrong with Auris, it’s a great amp and great option. I just put them up again two strong competitors.
Bump the price up a notch, the Bigger Ben versus the Taboo and CSP3 with all the bells and whistles. The Bigger Ben delivers really well with great tube options. The Taboo/CSP side by side, takes up the same foot print as the Bigger Ben. Same price point putting the Taboo together with the CSP compared to Bigger Ben. Unfortunately I don’t have them side by side to compare but all the amazing options of the Taboo/CSP, it would be hard not to take that option.
Then the last comparison, the Nautilus versus the Taboo and CSP3 with all the bells and whistles. The Nautilus hits harder than any amp I’ve tried meaning the way it delivers detail, drums hit, bass, it’s an amazing amp and it’s the quietest of the bunch. At $8500 and 72lbs, it’s a monster and it’s hard to compare the Taboo CSP3 at little over $5000 for both at total weight around 25lbs but it’s quiet, delivers excellent sound and flexibility. I may in the next couple weeks have the ability to compare the Taboo/CSP to the Nautilus, maybe DNA, we’ll see how that goes and then I can update it again.
Auris is the least known and easy to get, not often found used. A&S is the next easiest to get, also not found used often but more than Auris. Then Decware, still working on a queue from last December and rarely comes up used for sale but I have seen a few CSP plain jane’s on the Decware forum.
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Great write-up, thanks for sharing. 
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I’m reviving this topic because my Zen Taboo Mk IV just arrived. My wait: almost 24 months. Some of that was caused by COVID, some of that likely followed from the tube scare with Russia/Ukraine. I’ve watched completions on Decware’s order list and the pace of work really picked up over the last few months. Perhaps they hired more staff.
The queue has expanded to 2,310 orders at the time of writing.
My initial impressions of my upgraded balanced inputs and upgraded caps ZTM4 are:
- I’d rate this as a warm and medium-wet amp. It does NOT have a light, airy, thin timbre nor a super thick and gooey one, but it’s still a traditional tube amp rather than a linear-focused design. It delivers bass and body in a way that few other amps can. The typically lean HD600 and HD800S often don’t need (as much or any) bass EQ.
- The 800S puts a lot of sound in the middle of the stage, versus being super wide and distant with many other amps.
- The amp has left and right volume controls. They are very useful for adjusting badly mastered recordings, not having to deal with uneven pot sensitivity, and compensating for personal hearing differences. It’d be great for speaker balance settings too. It takes more time to adjust than a single volume pot of course.
- The third pot controls “lucid mode.” The first half of rotation is crossfeed, while the second half is “extraction” or presence. I’ve found that this feature works well with acoustic and vocals at least for crossfeed, but even that can exaggerate studio tricks and becomes weird (e.g., turn it off completely for the shoegaze genre such as The Stone Roses [1989]).
- The 800S picks up and presents more harmonics and less air.
- OG Focal Clear…still listening
- HD6XX…yet to test
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