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.
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.