How do I break in a tube amplifier?

My god; you can leave it unattended whenever you wish. I mean, I wouldn't drive off for the day while it's on, but I've left my ARC or Sophia or BAT on for hours while I'm otherwise occupied.

Just make sure small children aren't around it.

I had the large caps replaced on my former ARC CL-60. I walked into the store's back room where my amp was sitting on a table. It was turned on with no speakers attached.
The tech told me it is alright to have the amp powered up as long as you don't try to drive it (no input signal from a pre-amp).

A dealer told me that broken-in tube equipment takes about an hour warm-up to sound best whereas solid-state takes 24 hours.

Yogiboy - I'm strongly considering doing this, but the audiophile in my struggles with the idea of something unecessary in the signal path.

Wolf_garcia - Will the tape outputs bypass the preamp in the receiver? I did figure out the setting last night were my receiver will pass all audio signals to the TV so I can just set the speakers to "no" and use the TV for volume when the speakers are not connected. This is also a workable solution for everything but movies that don't happen often.

Mceljo- Why don't you get a pair of inexpensive speakers for your TV? You really don't need high end speakers to watch movies! That's what I do! Just a suggestion!

Tape outs generally bypass the volume pot of a receiver, although I'm not sure about the rest of the circuitry like tone controls and all that...they're designed that way due to the fact that tape decks have input faders that should be impervious to preamp gain.