Preface: Tubes are tubes, and it’s not a matter of if they will fail, but when they will fail. They are magical little bottles of joyful tone that allow us to express ourselves in a way that no other device on the planet can. We abuse them by driving them into distortion until they are screaming their little heads off. We plug them into amps that travel down bumpy roads in the back of vans and pickup trucks to the gig from hell. Some of us put them inside of speaker cabinets (combo amps) strategically placing them within an inch or two of the speakers and then punish them relentlessly with back waves. Some of us use them until they are a thousand dog years old and then express disbelief when they die.
In general tubes are taken for granted. They are archaic little beasts by nature. Having witnessed the entire process a tube goes thru when they are born, it is awe inspiring as they seemingly battle to survive the almost medieval process! This page is here to answer some common questions about tubes and to explain a few things that will give your tubes a good start to their hard lives. Proper installation and handling is very important. A large portion of the phone calls and emails that we receive come from players who have purchased tubes from other sources and now that they have experienced problems they are contacting us because their source cannot help them.
At Eurotubes we are all players who understand amps and tubes, we are not refugees from the corner pizza joint, we’re not suits behind a desk. We research what we know. We have spent thousands of hours researching every amp we can get our hands on, documenting what types of tubes an amp can safely use, what works for different styles, bias info, etcetera. We continue the research daily, so we don’t guess, we know, and if we don’t know, we will tell you we don’t know and then put it on our “to learn” list. Even if you have purchased tubes from somewhere else we will offer you assistance.
We hope the following information will help you to understand a little more about your amp and your tubes. Knowledge is power!
The Answers
- #1. Tube Changing, Care, and Handling
- #2. Common tube base configurations: Noval/9-Pin, Octal, Four Pin
- #3. How Hot Should My Tubes Run?
- #4. What Is Biasing?
- #5. Does My Amp Need To Be Biased?
- #6. Is My Amplifier Class A? (Classes of Operation)
- #7. Modes of Failure and Symptoms
- #8. USA, European and Military preamp tube designations