Static noise from speakers

Yes, I do have tubes. I am using a Conrad Johnson CJ60SE amp and a VTL 2.5 preamp. The tubes in my amp are getting kind of old (2 year old, and a fair amount of listening time). I now seem to vaguely remember that a few months back I had a similar problem but to a lesser extent and after cleaning tube pins and sockets with alcohol the problem went away for some time. Based on your comments Reubent, you probably nailed the problem first shot. The odd thing is that the system sounds great to my ears...except for this intermittent static noise. I thought that when tubes were on their way out the system would not sound so good. My lack of experience with tubes I guess. Problem is usually in Left channel. I will follow your recommendations and swap tubes sides to see if I can isolate problem to one side.

Do you believe that only one tube is causing this or the tubes on the one side? Is there anything visual that I could inspect to determine if I have a bad tube? I do not have a tube tester.

Thanks,
NJT

This morning I swapped interconnects at the preamp and heard some static noise on the right channel. I thought, good so it has to be a preamp tube issue. But, a few second later I also hear static noise on the left channel and then later the noise was more prominent on the left channel. Basically, I think that the problem is the same, I probably had not noticed the static noise in the right channel since it is so faint and only occasionally occurs. I guess this points me to an amp tube problem. The problem occurs with any source hooked-up.

Thanks for all your help and please let me know if you have any more troubleshooting tips to share.

Reubent,

Yes, I will swap tubes but I am so surprised to see that system still sounds so good....even with tubes on the way out.

Not sure, but I guess that I could also have tubes tested at an audio store instead of swapping. Maybe this could better determine whether I need to change only one or two tubes versus all the tubes.

THx,
NJT