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RE: Tube Life- Power Cycling

Posted by R. Mercure (A) on October 4, 2010 at 07:46:42

In Reply to: Tube Life- Power Cycling posted by jaydacus on October 2, 2010 at 17:24:32:

While I think it's stupid to waste energy just to preserve a tube - I live in one of the most heavily coal strip mined counties in the USA and that's where your power comes from in one way or another - it's true that cycling the filaments on/off does somewhat shorten the life. But..........possibly even more importantly, leaving most tubes powered up without signal can lead to a condition that was referred to a "sleeping sickness" where the cathode lost emission although the filament glowed merilly along. This condition was first noted at a problem when tube analog computers came along after WWII and many of those numbered industrial versions of the 12AX7 and 12AU7, etc., were created to resist sleeping sickness. But, as best I know, these manufacturing changes weren't applied to consumer tubes and I've seen several power output tubes including 6L6GC, 6CA7, and 6550 lose emission just from being left heater with plate voltage and no signal as well as the dual triodes. So even if you insist on trashing more of this planet unnecessarily - and all of us who love the sound of tubes are already compromised - you wind up possibly killing the tubes that you probably paid too much for to begin with.

Rob
"Monoblocks" = "monoblockheads" - it's "monaural amplifier"; "power output tubes" not "power tubes" & "patch cords" not "interconnects!" "Passive preamp(lifier) is oxymoronic!

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