Break in period for tube amp. How long?

Trelja, thank you for sharing your experience. You described exactly how I felt. Well now, after about 25 hrs the VPA's are opening up......the best yet to come I'm sure, as you suggest.

Thank you for your kind words, Jjwa. I just needed to share my experience with you, as it truly is a feeling of absolute desparation.

As you already had a pair of these, you should have a ballpark idea on how they will sound. Whether or not the final result will be more to your liking than your last pair has yet to be determined. But, to experience truly bad sound is more than probably a result of things needing to break in. The fact that you are already beginning to hear the positive improvement shows that this phenomena is more than just the audiophile, not the component, breaking in.

Please let us know when the amps get a hundred hours, then a few hundred hours, on them, and tell us what your reactions are. We all become richer when you do this.

Will do. Are your Jadis's still improving or have they peaked?

Well, the Jadis was actually bought in 1999. But, I would say the sound peaked in the 3 - 4 month area. After that, I didn't perceive things improving.

Interestingly enough, I retubed the amplifier early this year, when I sold it, and it leapt forward tremendously. To the point, where I went from one end of the spectrum to the other - from buyer's regret to seller's regret. But, since then, I have picked up another Jadis, one step higher. Though, in many ways, it has yet to equal the former amp.