Uh-Oh! Just bought a used pair of Elrog 845s!



Stuff is about to get real.

Aber ja!

Wow, nice catch there - James!

Does using an STR impact the Decware warranty?

FWIW the wording of the warranty is:

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So the way I read it is if your amp fails because something goes wrong with your STR you aren't covered, just as you wouldn't be covered if something goes wrong with your conventional rectifier, or other tubes. If you are using the STR and the amp fails for an unrelated reason then you are covered. But, as a practical matter it is hard for me to imagine a rectifier related failure, STR or conventional, that does anything more than blow a fuse, or two. But JMO/FWIW and all that. I’m not using mine in a Decware amp.

The Elrogs have landed!



The tubes are several years old, so well broken in but have been in the box for months. They've been playing for about 30 minutes and are clearly better than the Chinese tubes: bigger, more detailed sound and even more dynamics and rock solid bass. At some point I may adjust the other tubes, but for sure the best sound yet. I would probably be less happy if I payed full retail for new tubes, but these were reasonable compared to e.g. TOTL Chinese 10V triodes.

I am glad my STR doesn’t take those tubes.  They better sound better than the Chinese choices at $2400 pr new..yikes! 🤯 Enjoy them👍

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Not sure where you got that, but more like $1600. Which is still a lot, but same ballpark as TOTL 300B tubes.

Yeah, and/or an old webpage. Now you buy them directly from Elrog.

Kamran, I feel like this is some of the best audio money I've ever spent. It is significant money, but it is considerably less than I spent to upgrade my digital front end after I got my UFOs (because the old one wasn't good enough), or to upgrade from UFOs to UFO25s and the results are at least as dramatic as either of those upgrades.

Hope that helps .

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Ouch, that really hits me where I live.

OK, let me start with this. I was the guy who infamously said as my STR was in the mail that my system sounded so good already I wasn't sure it could improve it. But clearly it did.

AL says the STR can improve the sound 50-200%. I'll say the best sound I was getting +STR was 75% better than the best pre-STR or 125% better than per-STR without the perfect conventional rectifier. In other words, replacing the "perfect" conventional rectifier with the STR was a bigger improvement than finding the perfect conventional rectifier. You can compare that to your experience rolling rectifiers, but note that this is in a Woo Audio WA22.

Adding the Elrogs was a more subtle change, but concentrated the magic, so the improvement was smaller but important. +STR to STR+Elrog was another 50%.

For comparison I would say going from UFOs to UFO25s was a 33-50% increase.

Hope this helps

Slippery slope indeed. I first learned about them when I was shopping for 300B tubes. A lot of folks, who have more 300B tubes than I have socks, say Elrog runs up the score on WE and Takatsuki. For me personally the Elrog sound profile didn't fit what I was looking for so I went with Tak and had no regrets. But the 845s certainly have the "Elrog house sound" which is big, detailed and dynamic with liquidity more than warmth.

AAAAND I just ordered a pair of 845s from Elrog. Should be here in two weeks or so.

I talked with Steve today, and in general, his answer to the question of "STR impact on the Decware warranty," was very close to what James opined:

"... if your amp fails because something goes wrong with your STR you aren't covered, just as you wouldn't be covered if something goes wrong with your conventional rectifier, or other tubes. If you are using the STR and the amp fails for an unrelated reason, then you are covered."

Steve said the situation would not be binary; the issue was more gray than black or white, and he would handle each case individually. He added that he felt sure he could determine fault—STR or something else through investigation.

Tony- Many Thanks! For asking Steve regarding the warranty using a STR.  

Well guys had my first Mercury vapor tube failure.  One of my RCA 866A tubes upon turning on the amp power switch had a bright flash, tripped my power conditioner off and blew a low value fuse on my ground zero at the wall plug.  No component fuses blew or the SDFB did not trip.  The tube itself had black covering the silver canister plate and when I went to remove it from the STR (from the base) the glass separated from the base completely exposing the vapor it appears.  Ughhh…held my breath, opened all windows, left the room vacant,  sealed tube in plastic bag to dispose of.  Obviously you want to avoid these occurrences but single one off low dose exposures are low risk and still need to be avoided.  Repeated regular exposure is the major risk to health.  Is it time to wear a respirator upon powering up?  🤞😷

Well, that's concerning. A good lesson to the rest of us to handle any apparently-blown MV tubes with care on removal.

Thousands (millions?) of MV tubes lasted for years in continuous use and I haven't seen a lot of stories of radio engineers, etc., dying young from mercury poisoning. Plus, I dropped a mercury thermometer when I was a kid and definitely played with the fun silver balls for longer than I should have. I dunno.

It occurs to me that the cautious among us might apply electrical tape along the seal between the tube and base, as an extra safeguard. I love the MV, maybe too much, but I also want it to be as safe as possible. Just spitballing here.

Not sure if it was a seal failure or an internal tube failure that caused the seal failure. 🤔  80 year old adhesives under high heat a challenge …I  am thinking check bases frequently, re-glue base to hold and hopefully keep a tight seal.  I don’t think tape will handle the heat or keep a seal. I have glued several other tube types with success as bases were discovered loose

I am with you on good glue.

But also, old adages that minimize/rationalize exposure to truly toxic things are a strange cultural pattern to me, especially in this day and time when toxicity is more and more all around us, physically, emotionally, spiritually.

Thinking of those old stories of people living long lives in certain special places on earth while drinking a daily vodka and smoking a little at a hundred... you know the stories. Then I consider auto-immune diseases being epidemic, and various versions of "the spectrum" more and more widespread in kids, not by a little, but by a lot.

My wife was one of the healthiest seeming and living people any of our friends and family knew. She had eaten extraordinarily healthfully since the early 70s, from the early eighties on, mostly organic food and clean water; carefully avoided unhealthy places and things; ran, or later walked most days since the early 70s; lived in wild nature and clean environments without many petrochemical things like foam, plastic fabrics, insulation, rugs, etc most of her life... meditated most days for the last 40 years, Tai Chi, Qi Gong, good body balancing care from others... did creative work she loved, and more...

In about a year she went from that person everyone thought would outlive us all, to passing from her body at a little less than 74.

My main thought being... there probably was a time where many of us could stand up to a little toxicity now and then. But in this world now, it is coming from so many angles, we never know when our immune system will become overwhelmed, hyper reactive and lose it. Not trying to be a buzz kill, but implying being thoughtful and careful is becoming more and more important to me.

Something to consider anyway.

So sorry, I know that is rough. My wife was my best friend and we lived and worked together for almost 45 years... lots to lose. I hope you are recovering well... pretty crazy stuff.

I tried a lot of different glues over years, mostly epoxy and super glues, and they did not tend to hold up, though some might. Thinking of gorilla epoxy, maybe, but epoxy may be in general too brittle for the hot and cold/expansion and contraction of different materials we are trying to glue together with tubes. Weldbond holds well so far for me... I think I got onto it from Steve, but can't recall for sure.

I empathize with you and Will. . . I too lost my wife, my best friend, nearly 17 years ago, to cancer, and I am lucky that I found another best friend to wed 8 years ago.

I am always reminded of these lines from "Thumbellna" by Chrissie Hynde:

What's important
In this life
Ask the man
Who's lost his wife

Thanks everyone. I didn't mean to stir up a big pot of feelings! I am in the very fortunate position of having a respectable number of close friends, as well as two great dogs. I am also dating a woman -- a breast cancer survivor -- and that relationship is going pretty well lately. We're not exactly  at "best friends" status yet, but those of you who know know that you can't force that or take it for granted. It's either there or it's not.

So, as long as I don't kill us all with mercury vapor, I am grateful for those I have in my life. As well as all of you. Have an excellent weekend!

Ok Guys life has not been so rosey with my STR-104 these past 2 weeks. I am absolutely exhausted trouble shooting issues with Al on email. Finally determined that the STR is blowing the Torii Jr. rectifier pin 6 fuse whenever the front STR socket has a tube.  This makes for only a half wave rectifier which sounds fine but  it’s concerning.   Amp doesn’t blow any fuses when a regular rectifier tube is used.
I can't count the number of emails.  Very inefficient method, he accuses or assumes you did something wrong, jumps to conclusions without facts all trying to deflect the issue to something/someone else.  Kept trying to determine the amp is the issue.  I exchanged a few emails with Steve to help validate the amp was fine.  
Additionally, the power switch LED light developed an intermittent issue where the light would go off and on while power was on.  Then the tube sockets became very loose and one pulled apart at the base from the mounting ring. Al suggested I buy replacement parts off Amazon and sent links.  This requires multiple solder connections fairly complex.   I am not an amp builder.
End result is I sent the STR to Al  today to repair or replace all the issues.  It’s $80 shipping each direction to Canada. 🤞Hope it doesn’t come back with fuse blowing tendencies and no one else has issues with your STR’s.
I was seriously thinking of buying a Space Tech Lab DAC but this experience gives me concern if something should go wrong and needs support.
This is not intended to bash Al or his products but to just share one customer’s experience.  I really like Al, he has such a big heart and really tries to be of assistance the way “he” knows best.  His product is remarkable and I don’t want to live without it.  It’s just been a pain when issues come up.

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Sorry to hear that. I can totally imagine debugging a problem with Al going sideways. The mad-scientist thing cuts both ways. Hopefully once he has his hands on it he can get it fixed.

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Well, I'm VERY happy with mine . I have many, many tubes for my (non-Decware) preamp, to which the STR is connected, and I've cycled through a lot of them since I got my Elrogs. Some sound really really good, others less so, but I've settled on a set and I'm still kinda amazed how good everything sounds. Other than possibly getting NOS 211s at some point I'm pretty sure I'm done with tubes for the STR.

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Yes, it adapts triodes to diodes (similar to what the SET Decware amps do adapting pentodes to triodes). And while the external power supply is certainly a factor, to me, the difference in tubes is a much bigger factor. Which raises (again) the metaphysical question about how rectifiers affect the sound so much, even though they never see the music signal in your amp. And I have no answer for that, just as I have no answer for why in general some tubes sound so much better than others, even if they measure the same.

Hearafter -- Sorry to hear about your STR issues. Al definitely has a very specific way of communicating. Also, I think sometimes he assumes his customers have more electronics knowledge and savvy than some of us (me) actually possess. That being said, I enjoy the back-and-forth with him and it's been a real learning experience in general.

My 1002 is finally back in Canada for the 1004 conversion. There was some drama with UPS and Canadian customs, but we managed to get it sorted out. The takeaway is that if you're sending something back to STL, the declared value is somewhere between $10 USD and NO COMMERCIAL VALUE. Lol. None of that is on Al, though. He told me how to declare the value, but I made the mistake of insuring the unit against loss (which still makes sense to me) and customs took that as commercial value. I had to draft up a revised declaration of value and send it to customs, which seems to have worked. Live and learn.

Currently running a pair of 866s in my 104. Initially, I thought it sounded different than running the same tubes into one socket of the 1002 via adapter. Things seem to have settled in. As you all know, everything adds up, and replacing one component with another component is no small thing, even if built by the same manufacturer and designed for the same purpose.

I ordered a pair of Elrog ER845s and they came a few days ago. I won't be able to check them out until I get the soon-to-be 1004 back from Al.

Hearafter --

It is hard to quantify because we are dealing with a different number of tubes, or circuits if you count the dead socket of my own doing.

I can tell you that after a little time the sound is back to amazing again. As usual, my test is my girlfriend's ears, which listen with no bias. She says it sounds great, and her body moves a little with the music. Works for me.