I would like to share with you my experience regarding the elekit TU-879s which mangboy mentioned.
I went to Japan last December, 2012 and was based in Osaka for 2 weeks. The hotel where we stayed was walking distance from Den Den town, which is their equivalent of Raon - literally a small town full of electronics and hobby shops. In one of those shops, I was able to listen to an assembled elekit TU-879s driving a pair of fostex full range speakers. The sound was indeed very good - warm, with very good soundstaging and mids to die for. The kit boasts of a high quality kitamura kiden power transformer, very high quality pcb, and parts carefully chosen by elekit. It comes with electro-harmonix 6L6GC tubes, but you can use EL34's, 6550's, KT88's, without any adjustment. The price of the kit was 36,000 yen, with a 5% discount if you are a foreigner. There were other kits from elekit, like a single ended 2A3, 300B, a tube preamp, and a hybrid integrated amp. The kit must be very popular there because it was always out of stock. I even went back the morning of our departure for Manila, but there were no stocks yet.
This kit is definitely worth buying, and if i ever go back to japan, this would probably be the first thing i would buy. If you have friends or relatives bound for japan, you can probably ask them to bring one home for you - that is, if they are willing to bring an extra 8 kilos worth of amplifier!
