I live in Nanaimo. If you can swing a trip to Victoria Soundhounds on Pandora carries both Jolida and ASL.. You can send an e-mail to Tash at Soundhounds and he can tell you who is carrying ASL. ASL is bigger than Jolida as a company so they should be carried by someone in Vancouver. I''m pretty sure there is a dealer in Surrey or Langley that carries ASL.

As for the differences I can't say. The old one was very good. Have not heard the new one.

If you go to Audio Asylum in the tube forum you can ask the owner of the company Joseph Lau what improvements have been made. Be sure to put Joseph Lau in the title of your thread because ASL gets a lot of chatter and he probably won't see it.

It's actually another small advantage to be able to talk to the owner of the company either...espeically if you've never biased an amp or you want to try out different tubes.

I highly recommend Soundhounds BTW because while the store is basicaly a house they carry a very wide selection. The store is crammed with stuff but if you want to compare two brands against each other it's better than Hi-fi Center or Commercial Electronics. They don't carry everything from every brand so you should e-mail to make sure they have what you want.

The last time I was there they had the ASL MG 15DT not the AQ1003 because they had the 302B. They also had the AQ2004DT preamp and Wave 8 monoblocks that run all together $700.00Cdn or so. I prefer the integrated myself but it depends on speakers.

Partial list of the brands Soundhounds carries
http://www.soundhounds.com/