{"id":7281,"date":"2018-03-16T20:22:58","date_gmt":"2018-03-16T20:22:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bartola.co.uk\/valves\/?p=7281"},"modified":"2018-03-17T09:36:26","modified_gmt":"2018-03-17T09:36:26","slug":"elrog-er801-a-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bartola.co.uk\/valves\/2018\/03\/16\/elrog-er801-a-review\/","title":{"rendered":"ELROG ER801-A Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I’ve been listening for over a week the Elrog ER801a<\/a> prototypes. I can say that I’m very please with them. Before I make any further impressions about their sound, let me start from the beginning.<\/p>\n

I purchased\u00a0last year from ELROG (now Deutsche Elektronenr\u00f6hren Manufaktur GmbH.) a pair of these valves to be used on my VT25\/10Y<\/a> preamp. \u00a0I do not own any 801a, but have a good stash of NOS VT25 and 10Y valves. I love this preamp, probably my favourite with the 01a.<\/p>\n

Thomas Mayer offered me to send me a preliminary set of prototype valves in advance so I can submit them to the mercy of my tests. That sounded like really good fun and also I thought that the folks out there would be very keen to see the results.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

When I received the valves<\/a>, I was impressed with the quality of the manufacturing as well as the size of these valves. \u00a0What a piece of german engineering precision!<\/p>\n

My first test was to trace the curves and see how linear these prototypes are.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

Thomas advised me that the prototypes had a lower mu. I confirmed their 7.5 mu, instead of the 8 expected. Either way, the curves show how linear this valve is. Elrog made a great work in replicating the 801a and delivering a really linear valve.<\/p>\n

My next step was to test the distortion and harmonic profile. I replicated on the bench my preamp operating point with the exception that I did fixed bias instead of filament bias:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As you can see, I’m running the 801a rather cool due to the HT power supply limitation on 230V. I biased the valve on 200V and 14mA. The output distortion of the stage is really low at 0.02% for 10Vrms output. The harmonic profile is dominated by H2 and also a nice decay of H3 and H4.<\/p>\n

The valve performs consistently across the entire band:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Solid response as expected.<\/p>\n

Listening impressions<\/h2>\n

This is a very subjective point, but I’d try to share some impressions regardless.<\/p>\n

So far, this valve is outstanding. I love the sound of it. Very detailed and with a strong bass. No microphonic noise and dead quiet. Congratulations for the device ELROG!<\/p>\n

I can’t tell any difference between my Hytron\/RCA VT-25 NOS valves and these. They sound as good as i can get a 10Y\/VT-25 to perform in my system. Of course I\u2019m not driving the 801a harder, but is performing amazingly well as preamp.<\/div>\n
I think ELROG will achieve (once in production) a great replacement for the 801a, 10Y and VT-25 valves. Unfortunately I don’t own any NOS 801a to compare with, however I think my comparison with the 10Y\/VT-25 is relevant in a preamp topology.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
I hope to see other ELROG valves like the 50 and others which I’d be keen to incorporate on my system.<\/div>\n
Now will return the prototypes and looking forward to my production batch pair!<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
I hope this review is useful to the folks out there.<\/div>\n
Cheers<\/div>\n
Ale<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been listening for over a week the Elrog ER801a prototypes. I can say that I’m very please with them. Before I make any further impressions about their sound, let me start from the beginning. I purchased\u00a0last year from ELROG (now Deutsche Elektronenr\u00f6hren Manufaktur GmbH.) a pair of these valves to be used on my … Continue reading “ELROG ER801-A Review”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[12,153,156,5],"tags":[866,1132,868,867,1129,1131,1130,1125,1127,1126,1128,44,875,118],"class_list":["post-7281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dht-valves","category-driver","category-pre-amplifier-valves","category-valves","tag-801a","tag-801a-thd","tag-801a-triode","tag-801a-tube","tag-bartola-10y-preamp","tag-bartola-801a-preamp","tag-bartola-vt25-preamp","tag-elrog","tag-elrog-tubes","tag-elrog-valves","tag-er801a","tag-gyrator","tag-gyrator-pcb","tag-vt-25"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2r2tK-1Tr","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bartola.co.uk\/valves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bartola.co.uk\/valves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bartola.co.uk\/valves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bartola.co.uk\/valves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bartola.co.uk\/valves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7281"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.bartola.co.uk\/valves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7281\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7288,"href":"https:\/\/www.bartola.co.uk\/valves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7281\/revisions\/7288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bartola.co.uk\/valves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bartola.co.uk\/valves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bartola.co.uk\/valves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}