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Unless I missed it, and I'm pretty sure I didn't, no one has NOS 805s in their STR. I'm looking forward to your review. I have considered NOS 211s, but so far have resisted the temptation.

Aren't they pretty!

Elrog tubes always look beautiful

May they sound even better than they look!🤩

Hey, duaneh, that's a good question. I would guess that, yes, it does. Perhaps someone has had a chance to run it by Steve to get his position. I have to call Decware this week, so if no one knows one way or the other, I'll ask Sarah. If she does not know, I'll see if I can ask Steve.

Tony- Thanks for checking with Decware for us on warranty coverage.

CAJames- “Not using it in a Decware amp” …🤔Good idea.

You know that’s a small price one might have to pay for the results an STR provides.  🤩

So far so good🤞

They look cool! Thanks for posting your thoughts.

I quickly decided to swap out the warmer, more forgiving input tubes that worked best with the Chinese 10V triodes and put in the more resolving, dynamic input tubes that tend to be my favorite when everything else is right. (This is in my Woo Audio WA22, to which the STR is attached).

And it was another OHMYGAWD moment.

I'm struggling to find the words to describe the sound now, the best I can to is "refined and energized." It is like all the audiophile traits: the detail, the soundstage, the dynamics that were all there before just fit together so much better now, and it a way that makes the sound much more than the sum of the audiophile parts. Everything just seems so (much more) real. For whatever reason I listened to a bunch of vocal music, from Astrud Gilberto and Leontyne Price to Muddy Waters and Mark Lanegan and everything in between, it is just spooky how alive each singer sounds. And how real the backing musicians sound. And how big the space in which they are playing sounds.

I'm reflecting on my experience with 300B tubes, inexpensive Chinese that sounded really good and expensive Takatsuki that sounded better, in ways that were small but important. At that time I felt like the Taks were worth the money, for the same reason that my UFO25s are worth the premium over my UFOs. The budget 300Bs and the plain UFOs were great, but once I heard what was possible with the upgrades I wouldn't want to be without it, even though in absolute terms the differences were pretty modest. I feel like the Elrog 845s are a bigger upgrade than either the Taks or the UFO25s, and now that I know what is possible I wouldn't want to be without them either. Even if it meant buying a new pair.

 

CAjames - just a quick search that came up with this seller.  Sounds like a “Top Fishing” seller…above my tube PP.