Poor communication and after-sales-service
In February 2023 I purchased an Integrated Tube Amplifier from this company. I was dealing with a person named Ali who not even for once allowed me to converse with him on the phone and all correspondence was via WhatsApp messages only. He did offer me a discount which seemed like a good deal. I paid for it via online money transfer (Phone Pe) and the amplifier came well packed and shipped to me in Chennai. I did receive a bill but the amount was far less than what I paid for the amplifier. For a little over a year everything seemed fine till around mid 2024 when there was a sudden noticeable drop in the volume in the left channel and gradually it began to drop further till eventually nothing would come out of the left speaker. I addressed this problem and I was told by Ali that all the four EL34 tubes had to be changed. I wondered why because he hadn't even seen the amplifier or checked it. In August 2024 smoke starting coming out of one of the vents on the left side of the amplifier. I shut it down, removed the tubes and intimated Ali about it. I was also constantly sending him messages about the amplifier. He was furious saying he had instructed me not to use the amplifier and that stocks of the new tubes would arrive only in March 2025. Meanwhile I wrote to china-hifi, the manufacturer of the amplifier and they promptly wrote to me indicating which capacitors would have gone bad on the board. I intimated this to Ali too. After waiting, in February 2025 I once again wrote to Ali about the tubes and the amplifier and he wrote back a long e-mail once again blaming me for not following his instructions. I was also asked to ship the amplifier to Mumbai for repairs. (The 21kg amplifier costs Rs.2800 to ship to Bangalore via courier) Meanwhile I was already doing some searching for Tube Amplifier technicians and I came across Lizzner, an institute in Bangalore that was teaching Electronics, they still do though not on the scale of the classes of their yesteryears. Mr. Philip there instantly told me how to diagnose if it was a problem with the tubes because it wasn't a fault of the tubes. I eventually took the amplifier to Bangalore where in his class he easily located three defective capacitors, just as china-hifi had indicated. I and the students not only replaced the defective caps but replaced all other similar capacitors too, literally giving the amplifier an upgrade. I got the amplifier fixed literally for free. Nothing was wrong with the tubes. So bottom-line, SoundFoundations.in cannot be trusted for after-sales-service. I give them 3 stars for the product and price.