Tube Preamps Should Have This Feature


So it's late or you just want some casual listening for a short time. "Should I fire up my tube pre for 30 minutes?". My answer is "No". Why not let me flip a switch (or push in the volume control) to put my pre into "bypass" mode? Bypass would, effectively, convert your pre into a passive device, keeping the tubes dark.

This sounds useful to me.

128x128dweller

To my needs experience,  solid state stuff needs much more warm up time than tubes stuff which sound already fine after a few minutes of warm up.

Agree, In my limited experience SS requires longer warm-up time to sound best. 

I turn my Avatar on once a day and turn it off once a day, with rare exceptions. I don't like burning tubes for nothing but it appears that I do it. I feel better about this than about multiple on/offs a day. Terrible for ecology, I know, but I compensate with other things.

I just leave my tube preamp and tube DAC on all the time, unless I'm away for more than a day or during thunderstorms. I have no problem with tube life.

@invalid 

Definitely that can be true. But is somewhat dependent on the specific equipment. 

I suspect both your pieces of equipment have solid state power supplies and tube amplification. Tube power supply life tends to be much shorter than the main circuit tube life. Many older preamps had tube life over 10,000 hours, they never had tubed power supplies. 

@ghdprentice  both my pieces of equipment have tube rectified power supplies, no solid state devices in the power supplies.