Lately I have had quite a bit of experience with the Sophia Princess, Royal Princess and Sophia Mesh Plate, but only versus the EH Golden Lion 300B and the JJ 300B, both of which are pretty mid-level performance and sound wise.
The Sophia Electric tubes get consistently better as you go up the chain from the Mesh Plate and ending up at the Royal Princess. I was so impressed with the sound that we started recommending them to our high end customers.
Well this has started to become a real problem. Out of every single quad purchased, at least one has eventually failed. Up to a total of four failures now. And today I received an email from my best customer and he has experienced another burn-out. Disturbing to say the least.
When I started looking I am now finding several other manufacturers and private individuals that are experiencing the same thing as me. But still less than a dozen instances. The main thing being that a few weeks ago I could only find a couple of internet hits on the Sophia failures.
Is anyone else out there experiencing this situation?
We have actually had this occur in three different amplifier models with slightly different topography. We even upgraded a few of our mono blocks and stereo amps to try to make them more robust against possible burnouts by installing larger resistors on the power grid end etc.
Still, the new email came in.... same thing again.
So far all of the tubes have had shorts inside that caused visible sparks and pops, whereafter we find failed tube socket resistors of course.
Anyone else seeing anything like this?
The EH, JJ and WE are all still going strong without a single instance of failure. Even in some of the same amplifiers. Flawless against several failures. Seems hard to overlook.
What a shame because the quality of sound coming from this particular brand of vacuum tube is pretty darn fantastic. I absolutely love the incredible lifelike sound we were getting, so it is a real sad thing. At least it's good to hear about the Takatsuki TA-300B. Maybe my customers will give us a second chance now!
