Electrocompaniet owners

All of what has been posted is accurate. While Electro has been around for 30+ years, they have historically been slow and/or uncaring about after sales service. It is both a combination of cultural differences between the US and Norway and the way the company has always been privately funded and managed. The CD player is great. The old 25 and 60 watt amps were the better amps. Their pre amps have always had problems.

MAS Imports were one of the best importers (now Camelot Technologies) and if they gave up, then think twice about Electro separates.

Stick with your Bel(great amp)and take the time to listen to and select a preamp that does what you want it to. Maybe you need to repost your thread and focus on recommendations for a new preamp. I have gone passive, and have not paid much attention to preamps for some time. But, I have listend to the following and like what I have heard. I am also familar with your amp. Consider CJ, BAT, Sonic Frontier, 47 Labs and Manley. Good luck.

While this thread appears to have met its goal of allowing Bobheinatz to hear about some of our experiences with Electro amps, allow me to shed the last light to set the record straight.

None of the importers did anything to mod or max-out the amps. They all tried hard. Cultural commumications and other reasons mentioned were the real problems. The importers were never supported the way an American company supports its distribution system.

The amps have always sounded good. Some even great. Per Abrahamson is a great designer and knows how to design great products. But Electro was based on European electrical current, which is a very stable 240 volts, unlike the 110 in the US. The US power supplies were never stable and if the on/off button was not pushed on with one smooth push, the potential to blow the power boards existed. A fuse and a safety circuit were later added.

The amps pushed all the internal components to their limits, which caused them to break, burned out, etc. Was this a design ahead of its time or a bad design?

The circuit boards on many of the earlier amps were hand soldered, not wave soldered. Quality control was as good as could have been expected, until UPS got its hands on the amps. The hand soldered circuit boards could not tolerate the less than professional handling by UPS. UPS single-handedly destroyed the first shipment of the 250 watt amps. These amps were big and heavy. UPS dropped them on a regular basis causing large capacitors to break off the boards and other solder joints to crack. Once heated up, the weak joints caused the amps to shut down.

Electro went over to expensive injected foam packaging and through bolting large capacitors to the circuit board, but UPS still broke amps.

Draw your own conclusions. Many of us are business professionals. Electro has been around for 30 years because it does make good products. It does not necessarily understand this (the US) market.

I will start the process of allowing Electro to recover.

I used their products for years and loved the sound. They make good product as I stated. They suffer from cultural and 110 volt issues. Both of which can be corrected if they spend more time in the US with customers, retailers and editors to learn how the game is played over here. THEN they need to go home and TELL their management and investors that the US is different and will be a better market for them if they change to support the market. No one is saying that the US is better, just different. Their decision makers then need to make the committment instead of ignoring reality. Too many small European companies cannot accept that US reality is real because it is so different.

Different is not bad, just something that requires some attention.

However, change is a slow process and rebuilding trust is even slower.

They now seem to have the ability and desire to change so we should all give them a chance. We have done an excellent job complaining and sharing our dismay. Now, let's respond to the positive signal they sent Ern and see if they can continue and commit to US quality control.

I invite the people from Electro to come and hang out with me for a few days. I am a management consultant and will donate some time to move them forward.