Direct sales put extra burdens on a small-box shipper who no longer can expedite wrapped pallets to an importer's warehouse but must deliver straight to a customer no matter where on the planet. Once my shipment had been collected in Poland, it took UPS six days to have it at our door on rural Ireland's rainy west coast.


From out of the carton then emerged a stout flight case ready to take the fight to Oops, FedUp and other regular Murphy proxies. Inside that the four nude tubes had been inserted into bores inside massive hard foam to cut down to size even Murphy's most outrageous notions on extra mischief. In short, our cats at Feliks had gone the extra mile to insure that your goods will arrive safe and sound.


They've also gone with a solid enclosure to avoid visible fasteners in the front, back, top and sides. The result is a very clean look for a valve amp with transformer can. The company name and logo on the front are tastefully etched then blacked out by the anodizing bath. The only lights are a small white power LED and the rear-firing power rocker lit in red. Even the serial number sticks to the belly to not mar the dipped-in-black nightrider optics of quasi monolithic seamlessness.


Under the hood things looked equally tidy with a quality blue Alps pot tucked beneath a small PCB, Mundorf and Nichicon capacitors and that Teflon-sleeved silver wiring. Clearly team Feliks aren't rookies. Though to many their brand will be new, the men behind it aren't. Neither are China's Shuguang factory whose Psvane-branded upscale 6SN7 flexed particularly stout sockets and gold-plated pins. Even the sockets' orange-gold finishing was a nice touch. Whilst I didn't have alternate 6SN7 for a sonic shoot-out, these certainly looked a few cuts above. Here I'd have to trust Feliks Audio that also aurally they step it up. Except for very faded silkscreen numbers and a faint circular logo I didn't recognize, the NOS power tubes had no markings. Plugged in, the Psvane logos on the bases faced straight out.



To conclude the business under the hood...


... here are a few more views on it.


To end the show was merely a matter of...


... four screws and flipping things right-side up to land on four clear-anodized thick square aluminium footers with protective rubber stickers. Inserting the tubes according to their guide pins was next, finally connecting the deck to power and source and taking it for a spin down Final Sonorous X and HifiMan Susvara alleys to test drive into high and low sensitivities respectively. That's when the first surprise hit.