I just got my McCormack 0.5 amp upgraded at SMcAudio and had a long discussion about them with exactly that. Told them I always left my amp on and they told me that’s probably why my amp lasted 30 years. Put it this way, they feel so strongly about this that the power button on my amp after the upgrade will do nothing but turn the power light on and off but the amp is always on as long as it’s plugged in. He said they do that really so wives can’t turn them off — no sh*t, that’s why. Heh heh. I told their head tech Pat that I left mine on 24/7 because all my incandescent light bulbs always failed when I turned them on so figured I’d avoid causing all that stress. He totally agreed and added the constant cooling down and heating up of internal components is the worst thing for them. Plus, your amp is always warmed up and ready to go if you leave it on. I guess the obvious caveats would be Class-A SS and obviously tube amps, but mine’s Class A/B and gets just slightly warm unless I’m cranking it so works well in my case. He said the only reason to unplug a Class A/B amp would be if I was leaving for several days and maybe worried about a lightening strike. In any event, I thought it useful to share something I just learned from someone with a looong history of building excellent and pretty bulletproof amps. BTW @mofojo Erik might have a great point about getting the caps redone, but if you love the sound now you could wind up doing more harm than good, especially since you’d likely be installing very different caps. I honestly dunno but something to consider. Also, when SMcAudio redid my amp they said stick with the original roughly 25yo transformer unless I needed more power, so could be same for you and something you might just let be and save $$$ cause they pricey. But they do upgrade all the caps in my amp (Nichison I think), but that might be more for a sound upgrade than age but I can ask Pat if anyone interested about, in his experience, when caps should be replaced. The guy’s been building amps for some 30 years so might have some good and practical thoughts. Anyway, hope this is somewhat helpful/interesting.
