How often do you send your tube pream/amp to the manufacturer for service and calibration?


Assuming everything sounds fine. Or you don't do it if everything seems fine ?

inna

Never have send back for any reason the  Line Magnetic,  Finale Audio or Ayon  Ayon Audio tube integrated amps, nor the Modwright tube preamp I have . Once I sent back the Modwright DAC i have due to a problem with a soldered point. Otherwise they all sound fine and unless there's an issue I have no interest in risking shipping equipment out west or up to Canada.

Never.  And if there is a problem, the OEM is my last choice.  I have very few problems, but most I fix myself.  I got confused about the interchangeability between an EL84 and a russian tube and I blew a resistor in an amp.  fixed it myself in 15 minutes.

Jerry

It's not test equipment and doesn't need calibration. I would send it in only if it was broken.

Yeah, amps are not tape decks, still I thought it might not hurt to do it every five/seven years or so.

I would probably do it at twenty years... but with the exception of my first great preamp... an Audio Research SP4 (?... not tube... but that would not change my behavior) I’ve never had one more than about ten years.

Never have sent a tube amp or preamp to a manufacturer.  The only thing I ever sent to the manufacturer was a CD player.

Never have sent them anywhere, but I bias output tubes regularly, change tubes, and replaced caps, and resistors as needed.

I purchased an ARC D-115 MKII amp in ‘87. I had it for 20 years before I sent it to ARC to get re-capped. It was good until 2020 when it started blowing the line fuse over and over again. Unfortunately this also was the start of the pandemic.

ARC couldn’t repair it so I gave it to a local hifi dealer to repair. They had it for a year and didn’t make much progress.

I upgraded in 2021 to a REF 75SE and was back in business. Finally I had music again. All in all, 30 years on the D-115 is pretty good. I loved that amp and still have it. One day I’ll send it back to ARC for repair

Re-capping every twenty years is not a bad idea, I suppose. My amp is probably twenty years old, I bought it used recently, and I doubt that anything was ever done to it, though I don't know.

@larryi 

Same for me, only thing I ever sent back was a CD player... transport mechanism... the only unreliable part.