@sns Interesting that upscale burns in expensive new tubes. There are those that say tubes "should not be shipped after they have been used as the heat makes the filaments more brittle". I think if you can ship them before making the filaments glow, it is a good idea. that said, I buy a lot of used tubes and generally, almost always, don't have a problem.
Western Electric 300B problem
So I recently purchased pair of WE300B, Friday night first listen. At start up heard mechanical pinging and popping, pre muted so nothing through speakers, after the pinging and popping ended, pre out of mute heard nothing unusual through speakers. No issues other than blue glow at tops of tube throughout 5 hour listening session. Tonight I power up tubes for second listen, immediately see left monoblock tube goes completely cloudy with blue fog throughout tube, this along with popping, right monoblock tube fine.
So it seems I have gassy tube, lost vacuum already! And here I thought recent improvements with quality control there had solved these issues. Not happy with this purchase, been running Psvane Acme 300B's for nearly 1000 hours with no issues.
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I would pay attention to what @ghdprentice said as I would bet he has tried almost all of them. |
@SNS Sorry to hear of your bad luck and you have my sympathy. I’m sure most people on this forum have experienced this kind of frustration and disappointment and it’s not fun at all. I have 4 WE 300B’s that I bought from Upscale. They have been flawless. They were noisy the first time I fired them up and they did emit a slight odor. That scared me. After that it has been smooth sailing and I like them. However, my amps came with Shuguang’s top of the line 300B’s. Just to see if I could tell a difference I re-installed them last Spring. To my great surprise I liked them better. This is not a dig at WE, those tubes are wonderful but I’m slightly happier with the Shuguangs. |
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