Anyone have issues dealing with Sophia Electric ?

Not me. Quite the contrary.

So far I have had four different failures in four different shipments. Three of the Royal Princess 300b and one KT88 Grade "A", which retails for an astronomical price.

Sophia will always blame failures on shipping, the customer, or the amplifier. Bar none. It's getting irritating. Very irritating to deal with them. So far they have been good at replacing the first three failed 300B but it has been several weeks already and I have not received a refund for the last return, which was paid for by us.

I have a very disappointed customer now that is getting very antsy about his new mono blocks and preamp due to this recurring tube problem. Of course we may very well loose the sale due to this if we cannot find a good replacement.

Unfortunately the sound from the Sophia tubes is unsurpassed in our experience. I wish they were as robust physically as their wonderful sound reproduction.

As you might imagine this is a very precarious position for a manufacturer that is selling this brand as an upgrade backed by promises from another supplier that is obviously having serious problems with quality control and denying it.

Maybe it's time to make some changes. Too bad... they were going in the right direction sound wise.

Good Luck!

I have had good luck with 6SN7 tubes from Sophia, which are also very good. I have a friend who purchased the royal princess 300b's and a couple of 6SL7's. The 300B's were great, the 6SL7's were garbage. Sophia needs to do better for the money they are charging.

Some people really like the black treasure 300b's better than the Sophias. I think they better get their act together or people are going to go elsewhere.

"Unfortunately the sound from the Sophia tubes is unsurpassed in our experience. I wish they were as robust physically as their wonderful sound reproduction"

I have also found the sound of the A grade 6SN7 tubes unsurpassed, very linear with great extension top to bottom. Unfortunately I have less luck with their longevity. The first failure was within about 90 days of purchase. Sophia Electric replaced both tubes even though i didn't purchase the 1 year warranty, they didn't have to do that and could have said you're out of luck. Since then one of those two replacements recently failed. When testing the 2nd I noticed that it was borderline on the transconductance test, this at less than 2500 hours. So the fact that they sound great my experience to date tells me these tubes are not as robust as some of the other NOS 67N7 tubes I've used, not by a LONG shot. These are probably early results as what might be expected. The tubes in question are being used in a pre-amp output stage and the failure of both in such a short period of time indicate a QC or parts deficiency in their manufacturer relative to NOS tubes. I would be interested if others have had my experience with this tube.

Tubegroover, I bought replacements for my first set of Sophia 6SN7s at about 24 months, because I had a weird problem that I thought might have been one of the tubes. It wasn't the tube at all. I now have about 30 months on the original pair. They are used in my modwright sony cd player. I don't think your problem is typical. But I now have a nice pair of spare sophias, so I should be set for a long time.