Leave tube amps always on?

It is an irresponsible idea to needlessly consume power.

@avanti1960


That’s the conundrum. The NOS Mullard Tubes, all 8 of them in my 2 amps ( a quad per) are EF2 from the early 1960s, are almost impossible to find outside of LTA and prices are over $200 per tube if you do.  Even LTA acknowledges that unless they find another warehouse in Eastern Asia with 60 year old unopened boxes they will one day soon need to find a replacement tube for their zotl40 reference amp so I may not want to test Mark’s suggestion.

Today I will be watching football with the volume off,and listening to my main system which has a tube preamp. I won’t be leaving the house,so I will keep it powered up even if I go hang with the Mrs. before kick off. 

His reasoning was that it uses considerable more energy to turn on/off on a regular basis.

Do others agree?

Uh, no. Not even other manufacturers. He should have done his math before saying something like that.


Now the amps probably take about an hour or two to sound their best; if this is the criteria (other than just simple warmup which takes 30 seconds) then the answer is still 'no'.

I dont need any more convincing. Mr. Berning’s ZOTL preamp/amp technology is mind blowing performance, like nothing I’ve ever experienced sonically and I don’t want that burn out faster lol.