Lanchiya MK30 Vacuum Tube Bluetooth Speaker - Analysis & Review
27So I ordered one of these from Meh, and now that it has arrived and I’ve had some time to fiddle with it, here are some first impressions:
- Build quality is good
- The vacuum tubes are real, and powered
- The tubes are, in some fashion, used in the circuit
- Sound quality is admirable
As I had suspected from the very beginning, the tubes the speaker ships with are cheap Chinese ones (type 6J1, equivalent to type 6AK5), so rather quickly I paid a visit to my local tube dealer and got a matched pair of proper American manufactured new old stock General Electric 5654W tubes, which are a ‘ruggedized’ military version of the 6AK5. These seemed to make the speaker sound a bit better, with a fuller sound quality. The tubes are definitely in the audio circuit…I presume they’re used as preamp tubes, because running the speaker with the tubes removed results in very weak, anemic, distorted audio. The actual sound quality is good and the speaker is easy to use…the LED lights on the controls add a nice touch, too. (They put orange LEDs under the tubes, but honestly these feel unneccessary. ) Oh, and yes, it is a true stereo speaker! I personally think the MK30 is worth what Meh offered them for, and I’m not disappointed with it. I went in fully expecting the tubes to be purely for show, so I was happy to be wrong.
Here is a photo I took of the innards while I was swapping out the tubes:
- 5 comments, 21 replies
- Comment
I had no idea that they were still around.
@therealjrn Orlando is blessed to have not one, but TWO vacuum tube dealers! Vacuum Tubes, Inc. (Where I used to work, and still have a great relationship with my former boss), and ESRC, whom we do business with. If one dealer doesn’t have a particular tube, chances are the other will, so we bounce off each other like that quite often. Sometimes I think I’m spoiled.
@PooltoyWolf @therealjrn You are undoubtedly spoiled. That’s crazy.
@Bretterson @therealjrn Sometimes, just sometimes, things in life work out almost perfect.
@PooltoyWolf @therealjrn
You ever get anything good at Skycraft Surplus?
@PooltoyWolf @therealjrn nice tubes
@PocketBrain @therealjrn Skycraft is basically my toy store! They all know me by name in there.
This is the kind of in depth reporting that we needed ahead of time. They used to even send out products for people to disassemble (well, once or twice).
Maybe there should be some kind of lab rat program for unique meh items so that answers to questions like “ARE THE TUBES REAL???” are answerable at the product offering.
Thanks for the report!
@djslack I’m very glad to have been of help, and I’d totally sign up for such a product test program, were it to exist!
@djslack
I just love to take thing spart.
@djslack Gotta ask @WineDavid49 about this…
@djslack @rjquillin labrats live on Casemates!
But the real question is… how does it sound compared to the meh reference speaker, the JBL onBeat mini?
@thismyusername I’d say it’s a fair few steps above the onBeat Mini.
Thank you for satisfying my curiosity.
So - real, fully functional tubes but leds to make them glow?
Weird.
@DennisG2014 Yeah, for some reason they felt the need to augment the natural tube glow with LEDs. (To be halfway fair, the filament glow from the 6AK5 is pretty meager.)
My Dad’s store used to have a tube tester with a locked undercabinet fulll of tubes. Our first TV was a 25" Packard Bell black and white with a cabled remote control, and it ate one particular tube every couple of years; Dad would take that tube to the store to be sure and it was the problem every time. Even with quality American made tubes back then.
I think I still have the last tube he brought home for it but didn’t use because the TV had failed in some other fashion so we finally got a color set.
My first computer (Apple ][) monitor was a GE portable color TV that also used tubes; when I got it (for free, it wasnt working) I checked every tube in it at the store, replaced a couple, and had a usable monitor for 2 years until I could afford an actual monitor.
Fun memories, thanks @PooltoyWolf
@duodec And thank you for the trip down vintage TV lane! I guarantee the particular tube being eaten by your Packard Bell TV was the horizontal sweep tube, a big chunky thing with a metal cap on top. That one was responsible for generating the high frequency sweep signal that scanned across the face of the CRT (picture tube), and in most television circuits, was pushed pretty hard. They often needed periodic replacement. Hard-used ones would show a chocolate colored staining on the inside of the glass.
@PooltoyWolf Interesting!
I still miss that old TV. Many of my classmates had color, but ours was actually a larger screen than most. We three kids used to constantly battle for the remote, which was a plastic box about the size of an old Bell desk phone without the handset and hook, with a long cable about 3/8" diameter that ran to the TV. It was utterly cool.
@duodec I miss stuff like that. I’ve heard stories about the first wireless TV remote controls, which were ultrasonic rather than infrared, and instead of battery powered circuitry, pressing a button struck a small tuning fork inside the remote, which the TV set picked up on and changed channels, raised volume, etc. A kid would be playing with his toy schoolhouse on the living room floor, and when he rang the bell on the schoolhouse, the TV would hear it and change the channel! I’d love to find a TV like that, or even just the remote for one. The oldest remote I have is an early 70s Panasonic one that is ultrasonic, but uses batteries instead of tuning forks.
@PooltoyWolf My Aunt and Uncle (the ones that made more money than my parents and always had the nicer things) had one of those Space Command tuning fork remote color TVs. I do remember using a screwdriver to ping the tuning fork to make the TV respond.
I don’t think they were the first wireless remotes though; I saw a video once about a TV that used a flashlight as a remote; the four corners of the set had sensors and flicking the light at them would turn the volume up/down and change the channels.
My Aunt still has their huge TV console that had a 25" color TV in the center, record player on one side top, reel to reel (I think) on the other side top, big speakers, and room for records on both sides of the TV with tambour doors. I doubt its still functional but they use it as a credenza.
I think I still have part of that old Packard Bell remote. The plastic broke, so the case is long gone but I think the faceplate and circuit board are still in a box somewhere. I’ll see if I have a picture of it. I’ve tried to find one online before with no luck.
@PooltoyWolf found it. This is all thats left.
@duodec That is awesome! Looks like it has a speaker in it.
LEGOS! EGGOS! STRATEGO! AWESOME!
@PooltoyWolf It does. The little switch in the lower right corner would switch between the main speakers, the little remote speaker, or both. So you could sit and watch TV using the little speaker right next to you if folks were sleeping or conversing or other activity that made using the main speaker a no go.
This was the only control; there were no controls on the TV proper except (maybe, not sure any more) a main power switch on the back.
It was so cool…
@duodec It’s so wild to think that for the better part of television development, that ‘private listening’ feature went away, until we got wireless headphones made for TV use. That was ahead of its time. Also that color credenza console with the reel-to-reel sounds wicked!