I've been through much tube equipment over the years, in probably 90% of cases no damper preferred. The other 10%, only Herbie's high temp dampers, the ones with metal ring and tiny little o rings wrapped around a white colored plastic piece, work for me. The small contact area of these sometimes provides just the right amount control over a bit of sibilance or glare.
Tube dampener questions
I bought some tube dampeners and on when I put them on the tubes on the amp and DAC it seemed to suck the life out of the sound so I removed them.
Doing some tube rolling and while the new tubes sounded good the vocals were disconnected somehow. They seemed to distort during dynamics so I put a dampener on the input tube and it seemed to help at the cost of a little bit of life.
What is the correct way to use tube dampeners?
As vibration control are they like a guitar string and where they rest on the tube changes the frequency of the vibration?
Several burns later I think I got it right but I'm sure someone out there knows how to do this correctly.
Doing some tube rolling and while the new tubes sounded good the vocals were disconnected somehow. They seemed to distort during dynamics so I put a dampener on the input tube and it seemed to help at the cost of a little bit of life.
What is the correct way to use tube dampeners?
As vibration control are they like a guitar string and where they rest on the tube changes the frequency of the vibration?
Several burns later I think I got it right but I'm sure someone out there knows how to do this correctly.
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- 27 posts total
For once I find myself disagreeing with @Millercarbon: on small signal and rectifier tubes, rather than 'sucking out the life' good tube dampeners stop tubes from ringing and thereby creating a zing or liveliness that is patently false. A corrolary effect of the dampeners is a 'thinning' of upper bass, contributing to a more transparent image. At least this applies to my Svetlana Winged-C 6L6GC and WE435a tubes in the Wavac EC300b; that said I'll be the first to agree that it all depends on individual circumstances. I agree with @atmashere's comments on output tubes. |
@danager Did you try the damper on the new tube? And yes, you were really hearing microphonics- that's a property of all tubes. Some are inherently more microphonic than others, for example 6DJ8s (and 6922s) are more microphonic than 12AT7s, even though the latter have more gain. This is simply becuase the 12A** series is designed for audio, while the 6DJ8 is designed for instrumentation and video service.
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- 27 posts total