Great thread with a lot of good information. In the past, I have a Conrad Johnson PV8 which I think I ran in my system for well over 10 years and really never gave a thought about the tubes. At some point, I called CJ and asked for a set of replacement tubes. I got them and replaced them in the preamp and Holy Moly, the difference in SQ was absolutely astounding immediately! The preamp sounded fine before, but far more revealing with new tubes. You don't know what you are missing sometimes. Yearly replacement of tubes in general is unwarranted in my opinion, certainly not with input tubes as several above posters have noted.
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?