Quote:
Originally Posted by George Prentice
I stayed away from tubes in amps because of biasing... I don’t want a $10 or $20K piece of gear that must be adjusted all the time, with tubes that don’t last long... or can blow up.
... I have never heard this degree of musicality come out of a system.
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There seem to be some myths about tubes in this thread.
Perhaps it has to do with one's definition of "all the time........".
With my amps that have required setting the bias (Conrad-Johnson & Cary) I've found that doing so after a new set of tubes is installed and checking again about 30-45min later will be good for at least 1000hr of listening. I'll check again at 1000hr and invariably find that I've wasted my time. Setting once and checking once or twice a year does not strike me as "all the time".
With both ARC & McIntosh one does not need to do any bias adjustment, or, could you, as is all 'built-in' with their circuit design and has been that way for many, many years.
As for "blowing up", I did have a SET amp at one time in which the power tube got so hot it cracked the tube envelope. But, that was with a Russian radar power tube that was only good for about 1000hr, at best. Nice sounding amp, but no better than those offered by any by ARC, McIntosh, C-J, Cary or several other of the well known amp manufacturers.
The care & feeding of tube amps is no more complex (actually quite a bit less so) than listening to LPs on your TT/TA. Setting the bias might take 10min every 6mon. Much less effort then keeping your LPs & stylus clean.