Four Hour Tube Amp Warm-Up

Maybe it’s your tubes. My tube amps, both vintage McIntosh, get with it pretty quick, like less than 20 min.

My CJ Premier 1B takes about 20 minutes.

@hilde45 wow -- 4 hours -- wow. So, tube life is, in effect, one quarter of their expected life for good listening? That will sound like an argument for solid state to many.

And if you like your tube amp(s) more, keeping spare tubes around is an option. With extended long term use, and not a common situation, one of my former/older SS amps expired too. Kept a spare SS amp around for back-up parts.

Simple point-to-point tube amp design won for me - - no extinct circuit boards or extinct SS output transistors to keep spares for any more.

I've never experienced such a long warmup time with tube gear (usually fine in 20-30 minutes with "maybe" a slight improvement over the next 30 minutes).

Of course the speakers, turntable bearing/cartridge, CD deck, tape deck et cetera were also warming up @ the same time.

This said (since the 70's) I've never owned PP amps with large output tubes (just PP 6L6/EL84/EL34, and single ended EL84/2A3/300B amps).

DeKay

~20 min for me as well