Sophia Electric 845 - Any heard it?

I only heard it briefly at our audiophile club meeting, as Richard Wuwang came down with a bunch of his amps for a talk & demo. Although I'm not a tube guy, I was intrigued with his gear & enjoyed the demo.

I own a pair of the Sophia 845 amps. They sell two versions of that amp. The least expensive is fitted with a solid state rectifier circuit, and the more expensive has two rectifier tubes (5Z3P). I own the amps with the tube rectifiers.

A short history lesson, I got acquainted with Sophia when I wanted to buy a pair of 300b mesh plate tube’s for my Cary 805c’s so I could save my coveted Western Electric tubes. After replacing the WE’s with the Sophia’s I was astounded. I know I am going to get responses from the WE lovers, all I am saying, they were an equal for fraction of the price, not to mention they look cool. After talking with Richard at Sophia, he suggested for the cost of shipping he would let me compare his 845 amp to the Cary’s. I took him up on his offer, about 6 weeks later two of the Sophia 845 amps show up, I plugged them in and let them play for a few days as back round music before any critical listening. The Sophia’s sound stage was bigger, front to back and side to side, than anything I have heard from any amp to date. The presentation was much larger with more weight. The highs were higher without being bright, the base I didn’t think went as low as the Cary’s but I did think it was tighter. I guess I must qualify my finding and state that I am not affiliated with Sophia Electric in anyway and this is just my opinion and experience.

There is a negative, seems like there is always a “but”. The 5Z3P is a 5 pin with a locating pin in the middle, a standard 5Z3 tube is a 4 pin, two pins with a small diameter and two pins with larger diameter, similar to a 2A3, 300b. These 5Z3P tubes are hard to source, Sophia sells them for $80.00 each and you need 2 per amp. Quite expensive for a rectifier tube. A 5U4 is a direct replacement tube according to most tube dealers and tube sheets. I have bought both NOS and current production 5U4's with disastrous (sonic) results. Anyone need 5U4's I have plenty. And the driver tube is a proprietary tube called the Princes tube, again expensive and Sophia seems to be the only source. I did find a KR tube called the PX25 that has the same measurements as the Princes tube, I am going to try a pair of those.

Again just an editorial................Bob

Bob, what speakers are you driving? Mine are Merlins with an efficiency of 89. How do you think they would do? My room is 18X26X8. Thanks.

I am not familuar with your speakers. Merlin's web site says the impedence of your speakers does not drop down below 6.5 ohms, that being said you should have no trouble driving them. The impedence swing is more important than the sensitivty in most cases. This amp puts out about 22-25 watts. With your speakers efficiency of 89 you will get about 101-103db (pretty load) out of your speakers at 25 watts (doubling the wattage will give you about 3db of gain 1 watt=89, 2 watts=92, 4 watts=95 etc.).

The speakers I am using are Coincident Victory's. The efficiency of them is 97db with a nominal ohm load of 14 not dipping below 10ohms. I hope that helps.......Bob