Tube time
Join Our Community Subscribe to Paul's PostsAs I look out my office window I see tufts of melted snow, bare trees, a busy highway of squirrel traffic gathering whatever it is they store for the winter, and our cute, red, neighborhood fox keeping those same squirrels from overrunning the place.
It is fall and soon to be winter.
That’s the perfect time for me to run through Music Room Two and Three and change out all the tubes in the BHK amps and preamps. I use the cold of fall as a reminder to swap out the year-old vacuum tubes for new fresh ones.
Over time, vacuum tubes tend to lose some of their life, vim, and vigor. It’s a slow loss, one you don’t notice until a year has passed.
The fun of upgrading the tubes comes with the first listen. Wow! Time to go through all that new music you accumulated over the summer and relisten with the new fire bottles in place.
If you have tubes in your equipment, it might be worth thinking about changing them out for a fresh pair.
Fall is Tube Time!
Underneath the poetic gloss, the foxes are out to eat the squirrels and tubes rapidly degrade resulting in loss of sound quality. Squirrels can’t avoid foxes but humans can avoid tubes. I suppose that’s the difference between hobbyists who like to tinker and people like me who just want a convenient and reliable music player. At least we have a choice, when the squirrel slows down it will surely end up as dinner.
Good advice to regularly check, but every year?
My experience is that at least with equipment providing a slow tube preheating feature, taking a few minutes from start, combined with NOS tubes, can mean 10 years or more no quality loss.
However there’s gear on the market, which is known for abrasive tube wear. Not all take care of that.
As I have an Audio Research amp it is only recommenable to change the effect tubes at about 2-3000 hours of run. The other small signal tubes is said to last forever!!
I tend to agree with jazznut, annually for signal tubes seems excessive to me. I pop the tubes out fairly regularly , check them on my venerable Avo Characteristic Meter Mk1 and if ok back they go. Likewise with power tubes, are they all biassing ok – fine and to keep a closer eye on their emissions health. A lengthy warm up helps a lot too.
I was brought up on tubes in ships gear where radars, radios, tv’s, echosounders, communal amplifiers and even the movie projector had tubes.
Frequent changing could satisfy audio OCD but is it really necessary?
I tried a Class A valve amplifier. It has a solid state soft start chip to preserve the 300B-XLS valves, but a single pair of valves costs $755. That’s more than I pay to insure and service my car each year. Fortunately I did not own the amplifier long enough to have to replace them, and I never bought a spare pair to see if they had degraded.
I did some hifi maintenance this weekend, a few drops of bearing oil for the turntable. I emailed the manufacturer of the tonearm, which I installed 6 years ago. He said no maintenance is required, just leave it alone. My kind of guy.
I have tubes in my bedroom-stereo so I feel warmness while I lay in my waterbed.
Fall Daylight Savings Time checklist;
Turn last remaining dumb clock in house on the oven one hour back. Check
Replace batteries in smoke alarm. Check
Inspect furnaces and replace filters. Check
Replace tubes in preamp? Or maybe check and replace as required.
Since tubes degrade primarily by hours of use versus calendar age, for most of us, checking the tubes by replacing with a fresh set and listening for appreciable changes may be enough. Most of us don’t get to run our equipment as many hours as Paul. Although we would like to.
One more reason to keep a fresh set of tubes in reserve, and get out the Q-tips and clean the pins.
OMG., today’s comments read like an uprising. Is there anybody out there who does agree with our leader ?
Fortunately I don’t have to choose sides.
I never fell for the tube fairytale. Actually, last year when I needed a new amp, I briefly considered the BHK (stereo).
However, the fact there were tubes inside was a deal braker for me. Spending every year a few hundred dollars (or more) for new tubes…no thank you.
For me every month of the year is transistor time.
The only tubes in my house that make me warm are the ones from the heating. So, in a way, autumn and winter is tube time for me as well.
Everybody happy.
I’m not!
I hate the burning in period for cables.
It makes the high frequencies sound grainy.
I hope that it doesn’t take too long 🙁
Do you have a fireplace ?
Well. no, not in my house but like southern California in America we are having catastrophic fires (we call them bush fires) here in New South Wales.
The size of these fires is unprecedented in Australia.
Many areas have been in drought for 3 – 8 years so there’s no water to put these fires out.
I’m sure that Jesus will make an appearance any time now to gather his people.
I fall in the camp of those like Steven and jb4 who just want a box I can turn on, and keep doing so for years (or decades) and never think more about it until it ceases to function one day. While this is my attitude there are many that do not think this way, and that is fine for them. Cars are the same way, I have friends who are tuners, always tweaking the components or software in the car to squeeze out a bit of performance, while I just want it to start and get me down the road. This is why so many varied products exist I suppose to meet the needs of a wide ranging population of consumers.
I guess it’s like this:
If having an amp with tubes is that important to you, you’ll spend the cash to replace them when it’s necessary.
And for the rest of us, we’ll just have to make do with spending the money on something else, like new CD’s.
It balances out nicely 🙂
I suspect that Paul has a vault in the basement full of tubes next to the vault that will house a few spare AQ Dragons.
In Paul’s case both music rooms and the associated equipment are tools essential to the success of PSA. So changing tubes yearly may be a great preventative step. The questions I would ask…. is there any sound difference when it is done? If so, then should they be changed more often? Does anyone here think that voicing of anything should be done with anything but equipment running at its best?
I personally am a fan of line source tube preamps as they match well (to my ears) with the ‘classic’ monster solid state amps I have. I personally get much longer lifetimes from my tubes, but I never turn the filaments off.
Yes, there is a sound difference. It’s much improved when I change the tubes. It takes about a year of use to really notice the difference.
How many hours would you estimate that you put on the tubes in a years time? That would give us a reference point to go by. The playing time on your equipment is going to be more than some and less than others.
The system runs for at least an hour a day, every day except perhaps Sunday. Somedays it is on for 8 hours at a time. I would guess there’s easily 500 hours on the tubes.
I probably listen to my system about 10 hours a week which would figure to about the same amount. The last time I changed them was after 4 years of use and I did notice a slightly smoother sound. It wasn’t earth shaking, but it was noticeable. You have a very resolving system. Do you think that the more resolving the system that the more noticeable the change will be?
I’ve only recently returned to tubes after a 35 year hiatus for dac and preamp, but in doing so one big assurance — and reassurance — was that tubes and their sound quality in the units I was buying would last a large number of hours, i.e., years, because they run at about 10% of their maximum. So I’m thinking either I’ve been misled or there’s something going on with your usage that is, shall we say, different. Assuming not the former, one possibility is that your gear is running the tubes at relatively high capacity. Another is that the tube units are being turned off and on with relative frequency, rather than being left on until time to turn the units off for the night. Perhaps there are other possibilities…?
That’s the answer I didn’t want to hear. It would then seem to me that to keep things at their ‘peak’ the tubes would have to be changed much more frequently. Or at least at the point where things aren’t ‘much improved’. A ‘very small improvement’ is what I wanted to hear.
I think the whole point of having tube-based equipment is to give the owner something to worry about and work on. What’s the use of a hobby if it doesn’t require attention?
Excellent point & somewhat amusing.
Right, at $2K per matched pair of Elrog 845’s for each monoblock, I’m not going to swap these out until I have to.
A total of thirty tubes here but its a part and parcel of the system – I never worry.
Lovely on a freezing cold night too. Tis crazy but I just got goosebumps listening to a 1936 vinyl recording of Kirsten Flagstad’s Liebestod from Tristan and Isolde.
What a wonderful pasttime this is.
I typically test my tubes yearly, but rarely replace anything. I currently have over 3000 hours on my Tungsram NOS tubes in my BHK preamp, and my Carver power mono blocks have NOS 12AX7, 12AT7, and each has six GE NOS 6550A power tubes. I have many sets of NOS tubes, power and signal, some with over 5000 hours on them from RCA, GE, Tungsram, Tung Sol, Amprex, Telefunken, Mullard, etc. In EVERY case they sound far better than brand new crap made in Russia or China. I have yet to try my set of 12 original used old stock Tung Sol 6550s in my Bob Carver amps, but I anticipate they may top my NOS GE 6550As. A lot of new tube power amps are using the Russian Tung Sol KT120s. Not a fan.
I don’t have any tubes in my HiFi but I have a bunch of tube guitar amps and my experience is pre amp tubes can last a long time. An old RCA or GE 12AX7 can sound “better” (to me, which normally translates to “clearer”, more “full bodied” or even more “HiFi”) than a brand new Eastern European or Chinese made tube. Power tubes, on the other hand, do seem to “wear out”. You can look at the output sine wave form of the amp while steadily increasing the power output and note at how many watts does it clip, change your old power tubes for new ones, and repeat as necessary. You can also bias guitar amp power tubes by ear, “on the fly”, which is a cool way to bias.
Tube life depends on how many hours are put on them and how conservatively they are used in a circuit. Also how well they are made. NOS tubes usually outlast their modern counterparts when one would expect it to be the other way around what with new technology and all that. Many tubes from the 30s to the 50s have significantly longer lives than their modern equivalents. In most home settings they need to be changed every three years or three thousand hours on an average with modern tubes and much longer with good old stock tubes. PS Audio and similar situations are exceptions since tube equipment is used for long periods every day. Someone dealing in NOS tubes told me that GE 110 tubes can be good for up to ten years with average daily listening. Allowing for some exaggeration that would be well beyond the average life span of a tube. Obviously they don’t make them like they used to. After the initial break in tubes have a long plateau before performance starts declining unlike the belief that performance peaks sharply and then declines. Completely new tubes have a sharp sound before they are broken in and this can be mistaken for a decline in the sound of otherwise perfectly good old tubes. Regards.
Choose solid state and you do not have to worry about tube rolling. Choose an all-in-one and you do not have to worry about interconnects. Choose a small room and your speaker cables are too short to worry about (much). Cram opulent furnishings, bookcases, rugs and tapestries into the small room and you do not need to worry about room conditioning (much). You can do so much just by making the right initial selections.
(Grabs coat and exits forum, ducking and running) 🙂
great post
Agree 200% (because both of my systems are all-in-one). It’s the future. Valves are the past.
Oh! The (anachronistic?) tubes:
When you have to replace them, you must subject them to a break in period, but when they are broken in it is precisely time to replace them with a set of fresh tubes.
There is no rest!
How sad is the life of audiophiles!
Couple years ago I had occasion to hear a well maintained solid state component (Sansui 8) just like one I used to own. Good grief, it sounded awful (the owner loved it). In the years since my Sansui 8. I’ve gone pretty much all-tube (currently 29 in all) and no, I don’t change them every year and I don’t really obsess about changing them.
Now the thing about SS gear is its supposed freedom from tube ills. So what’s ailing this Sansui? I grant that this is too idiotically small a sample to mean anything at all and maybe tube gear of the same vintage would sound equally awful to me. Somehow, I doubt it.
Paul, remember your tube epiphany after hearing an Aesthetix Calypso like mine?
Yes sir! I surely do.
Don’t ‘they’ say, “If it aint running in it’s running out”?
Tubes gained a reputation of having intrinsic virtue because of when the audio industry was switching over to solid state. Why? Solid state sound sucked when it began its journey. Back in the 70’s I was a salesman in a high end shop. We had Sansui, Yamaha, Kenwood, McIntosh, B&O, and a slew of more esoteric amps and receivers. Tubes simply (at that time) sounded superior. Even a refurbished Dynaco Amp sounded better.
Today? It all depends. In the 80’s I had a Grant integrated amp imported from England with Mosfet outputs. Sounded very good. I had owned a MC275 and C20 (modded) when I was selling audio. Tried several tube units since. I find the best of the Class D amps sound better than tubes to my ears. Tubes earned a great reputation. One that was warranted. Today? No longer sure.
Seems extreme to change small signal tubes every year. If those tubes are run conservatively, you can easily get 5 years out of them with minimal sonic loss. Power tubes are a different story but should still give 2-3000 hours of sonic bliss before retubing.
I recently acquired a Behringer-designed tube amplifier under their Bugera brand of guitar gear. The VT22HD has a 22 Watt push-pull power section with what they call “Infinium” technology. This is flash-based digital biasing that keeps the tubes at optimum performance as they age, and notifies the end user before the end of the service life and sonic degradation.
The all tube signal path blows away all digital simulations for quality of sound. I can say this because I attended the AES Convention in October, and despite many peer reviewed papers, Masters theses, Doctoral dissertations and commercial development, none of the actual electric guitar players would use the AI, Deep Learning, physical modeling nor novel matrix approaches to guitar recording nor amplification.
Yes, guitar amps add essential euphonic harmonic distortion and soft clipping of transformer output stages and the preamps are anything but flat, but they are highly evolved to complement the rather dull and un-musical signal coming from variable reluctance pickups of solid body instruments. I am further convinced that the lower delays of tube circuits and the purity of analog tube tone controls contribute to why the pros all use tubes. Even in the >100% distortion of Heavy Metal, the state of the art in digital simulation for digital audio workstations is “not too bad”. At least, when I used those exact words to the face of the programmer, we both smiled in the understanding that this was a major accomplishment.
I bought the Bugera to drive my “studio” guitar speakers and upgrade my live recording capability. I also have an Ampeg SCT III amp with an all-tube preamp and driver for the FET output stage because bass needs less distortion and more power. The all-tube model weighs 85 pounds and uses six 6550’s, producing too much power for a 50 seat venue and breaking my back. I am looking at an upgrade for the bass speakers, maybe OTL. I heard Abraham Laboriel play through OTL amps and dipoles at a THE Show, it was a peak experience of bass.
Audiophiles can thank guitarists for the continuing availability of tubes, as they will pay not only the steep capital cost of tube circuits, but also put up with the heat and aging issues and LUG THEM AROUND THE WORLD. Maybe some of you hard-core SS fans should take a tip from people who make a living poring their souls into music and listen to some tubes – they do have more soul, with hot clouds of electrons like the God of Fire.
AND, everyone should go buy some tickets in appreciation of those dedicated members of our society who lead a nomadic life hunting and gathering audiences to impart Vitamin S – sonic nourishment.
Tubes with musical instruments is their kingdom domain. Everything in music production is as good as it gets with tubes. Its when I was actively a musician that we one day discovered the virtues of tubes. It took place with a 50 watt Fender Bassman amp vs a 100-150 watt solid state amp head we had been using for our PA. We all looked and agreed without hesitation. No need for double blind testing.. It was obvious. Tubes make their own music.
LOVE IT! I still have a Blackface Bassman in need of a bit of maintenance. I had not thought of using it for PA, have to try it.
Still looking for lightweight solutions, though.
We did not use the Bassman for PA. We tried the high powered SS amp on the Bassman bottom. Dry and flat. No contest.
Tubes could sound better with PA too. Not sure the Bassman’s is the right candidate for that purpose.
If you really want a surprise for PA? Its a light solution, too. This is something that may shock you on how it can improve voice presence and projection in a PA system…
(right click in new tab) http://www.bbesound.com/products/sonic-maximizers/default.aspx
paul- when you do your yearly tube change do you test any of the tubes you are replacing? if you do, how do they test? and how do the test values compare to those of the new tubes you are installing? thanks, peter
I still stick with our standard tubes used in the products. They are pretested when you buy them or I use them. They are pair matched. So, that is what I use.