Elrog needs to re-establish goodwill. I wouldn't want to be a $1200 beta tester with their history. Elrog should drop their price until their reputation has been rehabilitated.
Elrog 300b's for sale. Your thoughts?
I noticed this morning an add for the new Elrogs. I and many others on the forum ran the experiment when the Elrogs were initially launched. We found the tubes to be superb sonically, but woefully unreliable. In fact, the early failure rate on those tubes was apparently 100%. I and others received replacements that were hand selected for suitability in our particular amps. In fact one individual had 3 pairs fail. In my case, I went so far as to purchase a PS audio power plant, having been assured that limiting incoming voltage to 115V would ensure reasonable lifetime for the Elrogs. Two days ago, one of my replacements failed, after having been nursed along carefully. Honestly, I doubt the tubes had 600 hours on them. So the Psvane T1s went back in and I began the period of mourning for my deceased Elrogs. This morning I awake to the siren song of an ad from a reputable dealer who is announcing availability of the new improved Elrogs with a 1 year warranty. My initial reaction was, "I don't think so. Someone else can run the $1200 experiment. Burned once and lesson learned." But here is the problem. If all of Elrogs former customers take that approach, the new Elrog will also fail even if the tubes are good for 10000 hours, simply because no one will buy them. The tubes are so good that it would be a tragedy if that happened. So the question to all of you who have already been down this road is this? What would it take for you to give these tubes a try again?
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Hi Bill, The following article by the gentleman who founded the company that is producing the new Elrog tubes will be of interest: http://vinylsavor.blogspot.com/2016/08/the-future-of-elrog-tubes.html I note the following statement in a response to someone's comment beneath the article: These are tubes of the latest production with improvements which solved the reliability issue of the filaments in some amps. The tubes now carry a full 1 year warranty also on emission.I suppose that a logical question would be if the improvements that are referred to can be expected to result in any changes in the sonics of the tube, compared to the original. Best regards, -- Al |
Thanks Al. I had previously read the information for which you provided a link. Your question is a good one, and had occurred to me also. I trust that information will be available to us shortly, provided that even 2-3 "beta testers" take the bait. But brf's comment is spot on. The two principals who were responsible for failure of the original company are deeply involved in the current effort. Their reputation is less than stellar. Remember that there was a persistent denial that there was an issue with the tubes. The fault was this amp or that amp, never mind the fact that the tubes apparently failed in every amp they tried. Lots of us will be skeptical of their current claims without empirical substantiation, i.e, we find that people are getting 2-3 years of service out of these tubes. If 90% of there potential customer base waits 3 years the new company will fail. The purpose of this thread is for the new company and the US distributor to gain an understanding of the magnitude of the public relations nightmare they are up against with these tubes. They will need to explain to me why I should take this risk instead of buying, let's say, the excellent sounding and reliable EML 300b's at 60% of the price of the new Elrogs. Sorry, but I can't justify $1200 a year for one pair of tubes no matter how good they sound. I don't expect more than a 1 year warranty under normal circumstances, but this is not a normal circumstance. |
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