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Replace tubes yearly?

I just watched a Paul McGowan video (PS Audio) about the wisdom of leaving your gear powered on all the time. I get that. He also said that vacuum tube gear is the exception and not to leave it on all the time. I get that too.

But he also mentioned that it didn’t make a huge difference since you probably should replace your tubes every year.

Is that true? I have an Audio Research LS-16 tube preamp from the late 90s or early 2000s. I don’t think the tubes have ever been changed. I’m not really a ’tube’ guy but this unit was given to me 6 or 8 years ago. As far as I know these tubes are original.

At one point I got curious about the different sound quality potential of different tubes and another Audiogon member lent me a set of tubes to try out. I could definitely tell a difference but did not think the new ones sounded better than the original ones. I mention this because at that time the original tubes were quite old and still sounded quite good. And still do.

So, bottom line is, is there any real need to replace tubes on a schedule of some sort. Maybe its different if it is an amp versus a pre-amp?

 

n80

Showing 1 response by brianlucey

brianlucey's avatar
brianlucey
172 posts
 

The adage, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it ... comes to mind

 

I will often leave my Allnic Audio A-6000 300 BXLS tube amplifiers on 24 seven they are on at least 12 hours a day every day for the last five years, I have an AT-1000 Amplitrex tester, they are still testing in the low 80% range.

the amplifier has bias adjustment metering for each tube, I check it daily and have never noticed any kind of drop, it goes up or down a little based on AC coming out of the wall, but that's about it

 

Bottom line ... every circuit is different, every tube situation is different, if the amp sounds bad or the tube goes bad, you will notice, if you didn't notice, then everything is fine. 

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