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 |
I have 3 tube integrated amps between 2 systems - Line Magnetic 518IA, (845 tubes), Finale Audio Mk2 7189A (7189A/EL84M tubes, and an Audio Audio Spirit 2 (KT88) none take 4 hours to warm up; each sounds good after initial 15 minutes of warm up, and very good within the hour. If it took 4 hours 1st I’d look for new tubes andif that didn’t work then I’d be looking for new amps |
I’m becoming more open to the idea that sound quality could improve up to 4 hours, which seems to be around the amount of time for the big transformers & their potting to fully warm up. However, it is very difficult to separate any such sonic differences from psychoacoustic explanations (without 2 of the same amp), and I still posit that if an doesn’t sound good within 10 minutes of power up, something might be wrong or "off" with it.
@hilde45 As per above, I would never wait 4 hours to start enjoying the amp. And as for solid-state, there’s another thread floating where a very well regarded SS amp blew and took out the unlucky owner’s JBL speakers. I think tube amps are a lot more reliable than many audiophiles give credit to, and SS are not the infallible devices either, perhaps with even more potential for downstream damage (direct coupling!). A lot can go wrong with transistors; they’re mechanically robust but don’t take electrical trauma well - the reverse of tubes!! |
I'll try to be more precise in my warm up time for this post. Much of the warm up time has to do with amp, tube and parts replacement. New tube components, or new tubes or parts in well burned in tube equipment never bloom in initial phases or hours of burn in. Over time, at somewhere between 50 and 100 hours blooming will often take more warm up time, this may be as much as 4 hours, as burn in progresses warm up time decreases until a consistent warm up time of aprox 1 hour at full burn in.
My 300b monoblocks are undergoing this repeated progression at this very moment, recently replaced all coupling caps with Duelund Cast, getting up into 60 hour range and blooming is coming in starting around 3 hours and progressing from there. Between changing out tube components, parts and tubes for nearly thirty years now this is entirely common occurrence. |
