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Tubes Asylum Questions about tubes and gear that glows. FAQ |
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Tubes Asylum Questions about tubes and gear that glows. FAQ |
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In Reply to: How to determine when a re-tubing is required posted by 1973shovel on June 2, 2017 at 09:58:19:
First, have a spare set of tubes on hand. Sooner or later you'll need 'em, so just do it. Also have B+ fuses on hand - when a tube fails, you'll need it. It's also a good idea to have spare cathode resistors on hand (frequently a big 10-ohm connected to the cathode pin) which can fail if the fuse doesn't open fast enough.
Output (power) tubes I've had have all sounded pretty good right up until they fail outright, or until they will no longer let you set correct bias levels. I've had some bad out of the box, others fail in a week, and one set of KT-90s that put on close to 10k hours.
Small signal tubes tend to get noisy with age. If you're starting to hear hiss levels increase, it's probably a good time to try new ones. Life spans are all over the place, but in circuits that don't run them too hard, they should give gears of good performance.
Finally, you can extend tube life with forced-air cooling. The fans from Antec, designed for computers are very close to silent. I use a couple of them on top of my preamp.
WW
"Put on your high heeled sneakers. Baby, we''re goin'' out tonight.
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Follow Ups
- RE: How to determine when a re-tubing is required - Bill Way 09/14/1709:53:05 09/14/17 (0)
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