Crucial TUBE question

Accident is sometimes the mother of invention.  that said, I doubt this is a great discovery but you never know.

Upscale audio's response is predictable legal CYA when they have no idea what the technical answer is.

Hope someone who actually knows what happens when a power tube goes into a rectifier socket replies.

Jerry

@gs5556 Has it right, they are not pin compatible so it's very problematic to do this swap. You had luck with you that day.

OK I pulled up the pinout for both tubes.  Nothing shorts out (obviously based on your experience).  The heater will not have current in a KT150 so I don't see how it works well if at all.   Pin 4 is a grid in one tube and a plate in the other.  Other pins aren't used in both.  

Makes me think there is another rectifier in the PL.  Perhaps the tube is just for show.  

Jerry

Another thought.  Perhaps the tube you used was not a KT150 but a large globe 5U4G?  double check that.

If the Prima Luna employs two tube rectifiers for a split power supply, as their ad copy says and a photo of the underside seems to confirm, and one rectfier isn’t working, then only one channel would work. So I don’t know what you put in there but there should have been no sound from one channel if it was a KT150.

Yes, you can use tubes other than actual rectifiers as rectifiers, though a pentode or beam power tube would likely not work as well. Some Western Electric 300B amplifiers used 300Bs as rectifiers, and there were broadcast amps that used 211s as rectifiers. A rectifier is a just a diode, so if you take a triode and short the grid to take it out of the picture, you’ve got a diode.

Regardless, whatever you did in this case I would recommend you not do again.  Use the recommended tube to avoid harming your preamp.