Has anyone replaced tubes in Aesthetix Rhea ?

Rushton:
Thanks for your thoughtful and detailed response. Oddly enough, the noise I was hearing was not present last evening. I would not think this so strange, except the hissing sound was heard on at least three consecutive days before that. I'm almost scared to go home tonight and see whether it has emerged again. Of course, the noise did not go away before I ordered a quad of Telefunken 12AX7s off ebay. I haven't decided whether I'll swap them out as soon as I receive them or if I'll wait for the problem to present itself again. I'm beginning to wonder whether the problem is with the unit and not the tubes, since I can't imagine a tube going bad then miraculously repairing itself. I did not listen for very long last night, so the problem may be heat or thermal sensitive. I should have a chance this evening to give the Rhea a decent workout. I am curious to see what change the Telefunkens will bring. BTW, the people at Musical Surroundings wrote back to me indicating that some people have had good results replacing the 12AX7LPs with GE 5751s. Might try that if the Teles don't do the trick. Anyway, I'll keep you "posted".

Hi Stew, glad to hear the hissing sound was not present last night. In my experience, tube noise can be intermittent - from one listening session to another. It can be a little unnerving. I've made a practice of taking a deep breath, powering down the system, and coming back a few hours later or the next day. Sometimes the noise completely disappears, sometimes not. I once lived with a really irritating noise in a driver stage tube of my amplifier for a couple of weeks, then it completely disappeared and never came back. What you're hearing is more likely an intermittent problem with a tube than a problem with the unit itself. Good luck, I'll be interested to hear how your journey progresses.

"...since I can't imagine a tube going bad then miraculously repairing itself."

And, funny thing here... The system is sounding better late last night and again tonight with the Telefunken 12ax7s still in place. Maybe the 15 hours of playing time leading up to a "critical" comparison listen was not enough break in and the additional 10-12 hours is making a difference for the better. We'll keep an open mind and see how things play out.
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I had what might be a similar situation with my Rhea. From time to time I would hear a short duration hissing or rushing sound, but only from the right side. Of course my first reaction was to suspect tubes. During one night of experimentation I changed from XLO to Quatro-fil interconnects between my Rhea and pre just to see how this might change the sound from my turntable. I have not heard the noise since and it has been almost a month. Kind of interesting but probably not what you're experiencing.

I do have some Mullards on my list of tweaks to buy in the coming year.

"Hi Stew, glad to hear the hissing sound was not present last night. In my experience, tube noise can be intermittent - from one listening session to another. It can be a little unnerving. I've made a practice of taking a deep breath, powering down the system, and coming back a few hours later or the next day. Sometimes the noise completely disappears, sometimes not. I once lived with a really irritating noise in a driver stage tube of my amplifier for a couple of weeks, then it completely disappeared and never came back. What you're hearing is more likely an intermittent problem with a tube than a problem with the unit itself."

I had the same experience with my Callisto.
From the beginning I had a noise ( hiss ), but after some hours of tube burning it went away ( after a few days of use. Possible, that one or the other tube can be very sensitive at the beginning.)

Later I ordered NOS tubes and these worked fine from the very first moment.

Hi Thomas, thanks for sharing your similar experience. It could also be that there was some break in occurring in the tube sockets. I've heard of this happening with a new unit where the connection of the sockets and the tube pins needed some burn in time.
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