Why does it take so many hours to brea in arc preamps and amps?


I recently purchased a like new ARC 5 SE pre amp.  The unit had less than 200 hours on it.  Everything I have read states that ARC preamps take up to 600 hours to fully break in.  Why is this so and what improvements can I expect to hear as the unit accrues hours?
ewah

Showing 1 response by folkfreak

It's generally put down to the time needed to break in the Teflon caps.

 I've had a Ref 2 phono SE for four years now and still only up to 391 hours ... and I'm not sure I can tell you if it's changing as over this long a timeframe lots of other things change as well. Put it this way if you don't like the sound of it at 200 hours (or for that matter at 20) it's not going to sound that different at 600