How to tell if tubes are matched?


I am esagerly awaiting my first tube amp (not counting my bass guitar preamp). UPS says it is somewhere between Redmond Washington and Massachusetts (?). It uses matched tubes, and I'm wondering if I get them all jumbled up in the excite3ment to listen, is there any way to figure out which tubes are matched? Since I've never heard it before, I won't know if the sound has gone haywire, or if it's sounding as intended. It uses 4 matched pairs, so trying all the combinations until I found the one that sounds best would certainly induce thoughts of going solid state. Do they usually mark them somehow? Will biasing be affected? Will there be an obvious flaw in the sound (i.e no sound)?
honest1

Showing 2 responses by samujohn

Relax. This is not a new problem. Normally only output (large) tubes are matched. If input (small) tubes are not marked "left" and "right" etc., it won't matter. The output tubes will be marked as pairs in some fashion. Before you rip the boxes open, look for rubber bands holding pairs (or quads) together. Alternatively, the boxes themselves will be marked. I store my tube boxes in the exact same order that the tubes are installed in my amps, so if I try another set ,the tubes always go back in the original boxes. Stay cool, and if when your amp arrives you are not certain, post again with specifics, and somebody will walk you through it.
Do make certain that you plug the small input tubes in the correct sockets, if you get them backwards (i.e. put the 12ax7 in the socket intended for the 12at7, the darn thing might not work. Read the instructions concerning output tube bias carefully before you proceed. Tubes are tough and will withstand abuse, but improper bias will kill them off in a hurry.
Finally, tubes have been around for almost a century. If they were difficult and delicate flowers, they would have been abandoned long ago.
I don't wish to be difficult, but getting a tube checker is not a good short range idea. The old (and I do mean old) tube checkers that are most often for sale, are only useful to separate the living from the dead (and many fail this criterion). Suggestions to the contrary are misinformed.

1. tube checkers must be calibrated to be of much use in matching
2. tube matching is not an easy or quick art to learn
3. power tube matching requires more than simple transconductance matching, it requires proper loading as well, a facility few, if any, commercial units have. A match of 5% under a realistic load is the usual standard.