meagain Posted April 9, 2007 Share Posted April 9, 2007 I swear to god..... someone talk me down from throwing my amps in my little pond!!!!!!! Now I'm SERIOUSLY PO'd. I'll be surprised this doesn't turn into the straw for me. Dang amp is dead. Not the rectifier - tried that. I just put in power & rectifier tubes like 2 months ago. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I was leaving the house to run a 10 minute errand and heard "bad loud things" so I ran and shut everthing off tho IDK why I shut off the Jolida & Peach cuz I knew that's never been a problem...... then I grabbed the voltage regulator which read 126.0. WTH? I have to go try the old but working power tubes now. Oh boy howdy.... don't even ASK how ticked I am right now.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
meagain Posted April 9, 2007 Author Share Posted April 9, 2007 [:|] I think I blew one of the little tubes. But the power light doesn't even come on.... I swapped everything over from the working amp to the bad and it's still dead, so it must be the little tubes? That doesn't make sense - right? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pauln Posted April 9, 2007 Share Posted April 9, 2007 Meagain, my sympathies for your loss...[:'(] Please don't throw anything into the water... the only things that might be hurt are the tubes - you can keep backup spares or a nice SS around for these trying times. There are hardware solutions that might apply to preventing the problem in the future. The house outlet voltage was 126V... not power tubes, just the little one? You may have been zonked by the evening grid surge... the electric utility puts power out as a distribution across what they call grids. Each grid is a large are of power utilization, bigger than neighborhoods - more like areas of town. During the 24 hour day the demand for power in a grid goes along a fairly predictable course... during the night there is little relative demand, then in the morning with all the lights and coffee pots and offices cranking up there is a relative surge, another surge occurs about the time everyone is getting home to cook dinner and turn on TV's and such. The utility adjusts the power to the grids during the day to compensate for the demand surges and reductions. These adjustments can cause your local voltage to surge for a little while. You might contact the utility and give them some feedback... you're a pretty headstrong woman, you might see if you can get office on the utility board. As a latenight listener I usually turn mine on about 9:00PM after the grid is all settled down and stable. A couple of times when I have left them on overnight I have been awoken from sleep in the morning by my amps informing me that the morning grid adjustment was going a little rough... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
meagain Posted April 9, 2007 Author Share Posted April 9, 2007 Pauln - what type of sound do you hear when this happens? And do you not blow tubes during these? I just have a hard time with the concept of this voltage thing being so damaging to such an extent. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mark1101 Posted April 9, 2007 Share Posted April 9, 2007 You mighta blew a fuse from a run away output tube........I'm going by the gross sound you heard. You know the bad tube may light back up just fine at first........and then run away....and REALLY light up. Be careful saying the output tubes are OK. You need to watch the bias with a meter at power up to tell. You'll see the bias run away. Are you sure the rectifier is still good? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
meagain Posted April 9, 2007 Author Share Posted April 9, 2007 I have no idea, but I put all the tubes (except the little ones) from the working amp into the dead amp and it's still dead. Going to use my HK AVR430. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dbflash Posted April 9, 2007 Share Posted April 9, 2007 if the power light (led) doesn't light i'd check the fuse. good luck and don't let it get to you. tonight was the first time in 3 weeks i had a chance to listen to my system and after all the hassle of tubes, once i listened to my first album i remembered when i put up with all of this nonsense. danny Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
meagain Posted April 9, 2007 Author Share Posted April 9, 2007 Amazingly, I forgot to check the fuse. Surely it's blown again. Mark, IDK why a tube would run away. IDK what would cause that. The tubes tend to go down in number on the meter instead of the other way. When I go to bias them (every other day or so), they always need to be turned higher. Will go see if I have any fuses left. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smilin Posted April 9, 2007 Share Posted April 9, 2007 Meagin, I NEVER had an issue when using my NOS tubes, using current production, I continually had issues, come by, and I will help you[<)]we can even party a wee bit[*-)] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest " " Posted April 9, 2007 Share Posted April 9, 2007 what kind of small tubes we talking? on the subject of NOS....becareful with the "test like NOS" stuff. Tubes are either new or used. This test like NOS stuff is a bunch of BS. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pauln Posted April 9, 2007 Share Posted April 9, 2007 The morning sound I got a couple of times was sort of a howling whine - two tones, one big and low, the other a thin midrange buzz - not terribly loud. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Allan Songer Posted April 9, 2007 Share Posted April 9, 2007 I turn my amps on every day I am in town. I listen for between 2 and 8 hours every day. I haven't had a single tube go bad in my power amps in SEVEN YEARS. I have had ONE power tube go bad in SIXTEEN YEARS (a Mullard EL37) and one 12BH7 and one rectifier (GEC U52) in SIXTEEN YEARS. I have had TWO tubes go bad in my preamp in ELEVEN YEARS (both within a week of each other this year). Pretty darn reliable. I use nothing but high quality vintage American and European tubes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
meagain Posted April 9, 2007 Author Share Posted April 9, 2007 Meagin, I NEVER had an issue when using my NOS tubes, using current production, I continually had issues, come by, and I will help you[<)]we can even party a wee bit[*-)] So you 'continually had issues' with non-NOS tubes? LOL Smilin' - this isn't exactly comforting. I'm out of fuses so I'll see what's going on on the tube end tomorrow. I think maybe it's time to start looking at going back to SS for me. There must be something out there that sounds really good? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tom Mobley Posted April 10, 2007 Share Posted April 10, 2007 Are you having to re-bias every other day? That is not right. You should be thinking more along lines of 6 months. I think you need to talk to whoever built or rebuilt that amp. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smilin Posted April 10, 2007 Share Posted April 10, 2007 I turn my amps on every day I am in town. I listen for between 2 and 8 hours every day. I haven't had a single tube go bad in my power amps in SEVEN YEARS. I have had ONE power tube go bad in SIXTEEN YEARS (a Mullard EL37) and one 12BH7 and one rectifier (GEC U52) in SIXTEEN YEARS. I have had TWO tubes go bad in my preamp in ELEVEN YEARS (both within a week of each other this year). Pretty darn reliable. I use nothing but high quality vintage American and European tubes. Meagin, I told you I hated the new tubes, and even showed you, and offered to put the good stuff in. Stop bitching so much, and wasting so much energy on the crap, and go VINTAGE tubes.... BTW, yu should hear the way my system sunds now, if ya liked it before, you will go gaga now Please refer to Allan's post[:^)] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Piranha Posted April 10, 2007 Share Posted April 10, 2007 To piggy back on what Allan said, tube amps should not continually blow fuses or tubes! I would have that checked out if I were you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sheltie dave Posted April 10, 2007 Share Posted April 10, 2007 Lisa, I have had a set of Craig's VRDs the longest of anyone on the forum, and I have replaced one Sovtek 5AR4 rectifier in a little under three years. Our four year old son decided it was time to see how many times he could turn the amp on/off before someone noticed what he was doing, and as it turned out, that was about five minutes and one toasted rectifier later. I actually ordered two, because the rectifier probably is the tube driven closest to its envelope capacity of the three types of tubes in the VRDs. By now you should have two or three things at your beak. Extra supply of ax/au7s and 5ar4s so you don't waste a good set of tubes AND now have two amps down, extra fuses if one does poof, and a rudimentary troubleshooting process. Going willy nilly when playing with a powered 700 volt platform is not necessarily a wise activity. If you do have that much power grid fluctuation, and you plan on running an expensive stereo, computer, and tv in your house and don't like things blowing up, it would be a very good time to check out bids for installation of an isolation transformer or two. It is a good thing to eliminate the cause of the blowups, rather than again proving you can duplicate the symptom. An isolation transformer will block the transient spike from multiple causes, ie lightning, sudden power loss, fluctuations and surges, so it is not a one trick pony. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kev313 Posted April 10, 2007 Share Posted April 10, 2007 Are you having to re-bias every other day? That is not right. You should be thinking more along lines of 6 months. I think you need to talk to whoever built or rebuilt that amp. Exactly. Are these VRDs? Send 'em to Craig for a check up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deang Posted April 10, 2007 Share Posted April 10, 2007 Lisa, did you ever retension the tube sockets? You have to do that. After I did it, all the nonsense stopped. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dbflash Posted April 10, 2007 Share Posted April 10, 2007 i have also had the vrd's since 7/04. i have had one tube go bad (5AR4), but i have replaced the fuse's in one amp at least 5 times. if i am off from work i will leave them on 24x7 for days at a time. i think i left them on from dec 18th - jan 3 ( i know this will decrease tube life), but i was playing alot of music for friends and family. during that time i blew one fuse. after powering them up for a couple days i checked the bias, fine tuned them and haven't checked the bias since. i try and set the bias to .715, but it will drift anywhere from .698-.723vdc. once the bias is set don't worry about it everytime you listen to them. they are never going to be exact and it will drive you crazy. in the summer with everyone running their A/C there will be a voltage drop to your house. don't let it get the best of you. danny Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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