Can you do anything to make power tubes last longer ?

@inna I wouldn't say that I recommend choosing an amp that is easy on tubes so much as I recommend against an amp that is hard on tubes.  How do you know which is which?  

I'd say avoid an amp that gets more power than normally attributed to that tube--unless I needed that power and was willing to buy tubes.   And I'm fine with that. Personally I don't think tubes are expensive compared to the rest of the audio equipment we all have to purchase.  I buy tubes when I don't need them.  A nice pair of Hytron 801As showed up yesterday. 

There is a trend now to make higher power tube amps to drive lower sensitivity speakers.  I like higher sensitivity speakers but if you're married to your 92-95dB speakers and want to drive them with a tube amp, you need more power.  So they are making more push pull, parallel SET, and High power SETs with the higher output tubes.   if you buy some of these, recognize you'll have to replace tubes more often.  (not saying push pull amps are hard on tubes, unless designed that way).

If I'm looking at a 300B SET and the OEM says 8 wpc, and 300b's generally do 6 wpc, I'm going to wonder about tube life.  (or else the marketing talk is exaggerating and it really is a 6 wpc amp).

I've found that if you go with an amp builder with a lot of experience and knowledge, they are likely to design their amps conservatively.  And if you call Aric or Apollo and order and amp, if you tell them to use conservative parameters to promote long tube life, I'm sure they can do that.

jerry

Jerry, you are right.

Anyway, the best way forward is to have more spare tubes !

mulveling, I think I am done with audiophile expenses for this year, But..let me see..maybe I can cut the expenses somewhere else. This is a disaster.

I saw those Sylvania on ebay but I will wait - currently installed RCA black plates from early 50s work very well, no complaints.

Now that I am going to have better Mullards, I suppose I will not accept anything less in the future. It is either XF2 or XF1 Mullard or perhaps Amperex Holland.

@inna For longest tube life:

1) keep the tubes clean and free of fingerprints.

2) keep them biased properly, if you can run them a little below spec. This works only if the sound isn't adversely affected.

3) use the Standby switch to warm up the tubes. If you don't have one on your amp consider getting one installed. A standby switch cuts off the B+ (DC high Voltage) for the tube. As its warming up, if the plate supply Voltage (B+) is present, you get a phenomena called 'cathode stripping' where the cathode coating gets eroded over time. So a standby switch can prevent this.

4) don't push the amp hard. In a class AB amp (most EL34 amps are class AB) the harder you push the amp the hotter the tube gets and heat causes it to wear faster. So make sure your speakers are easy enough to drive that the amp is loafing nearly all the time.

5) make sure you have adequate ventilation. Again, heat is the enemy of the tube.

6) Make sure your speaker is connected to the right output transformer taps. So a 4 Ohm speaker should never be on the 8 Ohm tap; that would cause the load on the power tubes to be much lower, causing some of the power they make to be dissipated in the tube rather than the speaker- so yes, they will run hotter, put out less power and make more distortion.

7) make sure your line Voltage isn't running high. 120V is normal now and the line is not supposed to exceed 125V for more than a second. But I've seen situations were 125V was normal and unsurprisingly the customer was going through power tubes a lot faster.

8) the controversial and last thing: Some amps push power tubes harder than others so go through tubes faster. You might want to take a thermal camera to see how hot the tubes are running and compare that to other EL34-based amps, or use the internet to see if there's a correlation with certain amps that tend to go through tubes faster.

Follow these suggestions and your tubes will last longer.

inna, you can bias amp’s output stage for 20% less current, and use 120<=>110V step down transformer. These two steps will increase tubes life time significantly, est. 30%+. 

Ralph, thank you.

It appears that I do everything right. There is no standby switch. Voltage is regulated by the regenerator, I hope it is. Ventilation is excellent from all sides. The amp seemingly drives the speakers with ease, no stress that I can perceive. The tubes are clean, no fingerprints. I might try to lower the bias a little and see what I hear.