recommendations for tube dampers???

Hi Geoffkait

Thanks for sharing your thoughts and experience. I'll keep the Herbie's dampers in mind. You really tried a lot of dampers. I never would have thought dampers could degrade the sound. Good to know.

With my tube life question. I was thinking that someone possibly may have had tubes w/o a damper for a bit and after the tubes died when they got a new replacement set and used dampers with them they noticed they lasted a bit longer.

I look at them as an insurance policy. The purpose is to reduce or eliminate microphonics which is a form of noise, not signal. Audio research seems to provide dampers with installed tubes and provide them with low noise tube replacement for the prime slot in the low level phono section only which makes sense to me as the most important application.

Jedinite I like the Herbie's ability to be tightened or loosened by opening or closing the partial ring which changes the sound as well as moving them up or down the tube.

I'm partial to ARC's O ring dampers for small signal tubes. The do the job and are re-useable.

I don't think there's a darn thing dampers can do to extend the life of tubes. Yeah I suspect vibration can shorten the life of tubes (just as vibration can shorten the life of light bulbs), but we're not talking about guitar combo amps here so the type of vibration we're getting is not severe.

In my experience what tube dampers can do is reduce sonic smear and overhang, for want of more precise terms, in some contexts, by reducing acoustic breakthrough. Some people might hear that as a reduction of liveliness, but it's an artificial, detail obscuring "liveliness." That kind of distortion -- the zinging, ringing "liveliness" of acoustic breakthrough via microphonic tubes -- can be good in guitar amps where distortion and coloration of the signal is the goal (though I use tube dampers in my guitar amps), but I for one try to keep it out of my hifi chain. And since all tubes are microphonic to some extent, tube dampers can help.

I'm among those who quite like the Herbie's dampers and haven't found any thing else to be effective -- no point in using, say plain silicone o-rings, to me they don't do a thing. I having tried the brass things that go on top of the tubes but I have friends with ears I trust who like them. But of course none of these solutions can make a badly microphonic tube that's howling into one that's useful.