Leave it on or off ?

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Ray Kara
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Leave it on or off ?

Post by Ray Kara »

I love the bling with all the tubes , but man does it warm up the sound if you wait !!!! hours......... So, the question is leave the tube stuff on , or turn it off when done. Does it put more stress on the RCA 5751's if you turn them on / off ? Half the rack is electronic stuff, i think if i turn them only off the tube gear is not in line ..... :?: Correct ?


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Ray / 985chicago

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Post by Voodoo Guru »

Howdy Ray,

Ohhhh yeaaa man, nothing like the Bling!!
It normally takes about an hour for the tubage to stabilize.
We leave them on allot, but if there will be an extended period of time that they will not be used, the rack gets turned off.
They say the problem with turning them on and off is like a light bulb, there is an inrush of current in the heater and as they get older, the chance of burning them out is greater.
We have never had one fail like that though, most of the time what happens is that they either just quit amplifying, or they get noisy/microphonic.
Some of the tubes were using have been in service for 6 years now and have had no problems, others have been in for a month and have had microphics and needed to be changed.
The 5751 tubage is a ruggedized tube designed for the military. So they are allot beefier then the 12AX7. That might be one of the reasons we don't have that many problems with them.
Most of the old timers will tell you to never turn off the tube equipment.

If you do turn off just the Tube Rack Gear, it stops the progression of the audio signals because there is no bypass. They have to be on in order to pass audio.

Hope that Helps Ray,
Take Care,
Voodoo Guru
From Deep in the IDD of the Sub-Harmonix Realm

!KANT
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Post by !KANT »

Well I've learned to keep the tubes on. The only tube piece in possession ATM is the MIC2200 and even the tonal quality of the mic changes through the warmup period. On "cold" starts the lowend is noticeablly pronounce. But throughtout the day the lowend would "lighten" and a touch-up to other components would be required. So, now it's on continuously (while all the non-tube gear is shutdown during hours of Zero-Operation.

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