I've been on the Eden forum daily since 2006. The Eden amps made in Montrose, Minnesota prior to the move to Mundelein, Illinois were solid. After the move to Mundelein, they were still solidly built with very low defect rate. These were all Made in USA amps. The Nemesis series were made in China and they were also solid. Then just prior to the move offshore, there was a decided up-tick in problems with Mundelein manufacture. Don't know if it was personnel changes, people retiring, lack of quality inspection before shipment or what, but defect incident incidence went up considerably. These defects manifested upon delivery or very shortly thereafter. Eden fixed them but it was a pain for customers and a black-eye for a brand that had become known for toughness and reliability. Since they already had a quality manufacturer in China making the Eden Nemesis amps, it was a fairly quick and simple move to have the gold-faced amps made their too. Quality has always been excellent on "made in China" amps.
There was no difference in design or parts when the move was made to China, but strict quality control standards and product inspection (as well as ongoing on-site inspection by Eden staff) has maintained the high quality Eden has been known for. Later changes to the design of the amps was made by Eden, not by Chinese manufacturing and most of those have been cooling and protection circuitry improvements. Basically the guts of the WT series have remained the same as David designed them.
This year Eden came out with the WT Pro series (WTP). These are really the first major design changes in amps since David left the company. Besides the normal 12ax7 tube in the impedance section of the amp that gives them the characteristic warm "clean" sound, they now include a second 12ax7 tube which is in the gain section. They included separate controls for both the gain level and the mix of this gain tube to the sound, which definitely offers some new sound options. Additionally they included an adjustable compressor (both threshold and ratio) similar to the one found on the Eden Navigator preamp. And then just to make sure you don't screw up the ohms load on them the outputs will automatically switch from parallel to serial connections if your ohms load with 2 or more cabinets is below the minimum the amp can handle - so more safety measures too.
Knowing all that, as Armin so succinctly put it - Eden of any year!
Dan
