Can you do anything to make power tubes last longer ?

Yeah, miss Roger Modjeski - what a treasure he was.  He was the master of tube conservation.  Gave me a good tongue lashing for biasing my RM10 wrong and set me straight for an hour on the phone.  Never wore out or shorted a tube in over 10 yrs on my unit.  Sorry I sold my RM10MkII.  He wrote on his forum "don't worry about handling tubes w/bare hands just get the peanut butter off your fingers".  Just got a matched quad of EL34's from RAM tubes yesterday. 

Your bias current is usually measured across a 1 ohm resistor so that mV=mA.  The meter measures volts but because the resistance is 1, then the number is the same.  So a custom meter will measure volts, but it will say amps.

if your maker didn't order a special meter dial, it may say mV, but is actually reading mA.

There is a post above that contradicts this and I'm not sure what the poster meant.

Jerry

The 60’s Mac amps also very famous for long tube life… I have some 1965 tubes … Tele that still test well.. 

@whart I need to copy your dusting rigor…. wow…. i would never get away with photo like that…..

So you choose particular amps for longest tube life. That's interesting approach, not always works, though.

No… luck as I inherited the MAC which i abused as a young punk… The Music Reference connection born of my experience selling gear Roger designed and built w Harold Beveridge… also imo a genius… RIP….