Jadis Orchestra Reference bias adjustment?

At the price Jadis sells this amp, it's a shame that they don't provide for either self-biasing OR user-friendly adjustments like a good number of less-expensive offerings...

Dear Sir.

Concerning your request, If you live in Canada / USA,
For technical info, please do not hesitate to contact us
toll free Canada / USA: 1-877-430-1485 or
email Distribution@PierreGabriel.com.

Best Regards.

Pierre Gabriel

Importer / Distributor for Jadis products Canada / USA

Apparently, there are somehow inconsistent views about how often the bias on the JOR needs to be adjusted.

While most owners here at Audiogon feel adjustments are necessary every few months, one dealer in Europe says, adjustments are only needed once every 4 -5 years due to the fact, that Jadis only uses selected and well burned in power tubes.

Jadis in France says, the JOR needs no bias adjustments at all, unless power tubes are changed.

How often do you owners adjust your JORs if you don’t change output tubes?

I've had mine for 4 yrs now and sounds the smae as the day I turned it on. I don't know much about biasing. I guess the tubes have 2000 hrs, but as I say they sound like the day i turned it on. btw I use the bass and treble tone controls up 98% of the throttle. What I've found the tone controls have basically 2 modes, off/on. Only at 90% open do the tones open up, at 95% open there is some slight notice. At 98% is the only way I like it. I love dynamics, and anything less is not acceptable. Also at mid open on the tone the amp sounds very flat and lifeless.
So i guess if you bias from the inside, you get the same effect as pushing the tone controls up to 98% open. Only at 100% do i gut a hum from the amp. btw I lsiten at low volume, 1/4th to 1/3 vol open. After 1/3 I get much less stability /dynamics from the amp. Maybe the speakers are too much a load against the currect for the amp. The speakers are rated 87db. . But still, at 1/3 vol open, i get plenty of music to fill my 30X40(with open hall ways on everyside) cathedral ceiling room. The music carries throughout the entire house. So maybe with low vol I use the tubes will get a longer life. btw Pierre mentioned the Jadis stock tubes are quite expensive, so replacing will be a major cost. Which i have no plans to do for yrs to come.

First, I'd like to say that I cannot recommend my good friend Pierre Gabriel highly enough. We are most fortunate to have him as the North American distributor of Jadis. He is a fantastic person.

Pierre, PLEASE correct me if anything I say here is wrong...

Now, excuse my naivete, but if someone would show my how to post a picture here on Audiogon (do I just include a link to my photobucket.com album?), I can include a photo or two of the resistor that needs to be measured across during the JOR biasing procedure. Robert (mares-mares) lives in Thailand, the document I have is too large to be e - mailed, and I don't want him to have to wait for the mail to reach him there if we can do it simply in this thread.

The picture solves what is the most tricky part when you are inside the amplifier - finding that resistor. The potentiometers are obvious. You simply set the bias to a value between 95 and 120 mV (110 mV being the ideal setting).

I also find there is a lot of confusion as to the requirement of using two multimeters. While I have always used two, doing so with one would be just as efficacious. You are simply trying to make sure that each of the two tubes in the channel stay at 110 mV, as adjusting one could "potentially" throw the value of the other off. I must say that in practice, I have not noticed this being the case (though it was with my Granite 861 amps, but they were super easy to bias as everything was external).

Once you see where the resistor is, the DIFFICULT step of the whole thing becomes actually reassembling the JOR. In fact, my recommendation is to drill additional holes (there's already a lot of them there anyway) in the bottom plate while you have it off that line up with accessing the resistors and pots for each tube. That way, the entire procedure would become a simple no muss, no fuss procedure that would probably be done in about 3 minutes.

As far as time periods go, I think that biasing the amp every year would be good. For someone rolling the 12AX7 tubes, which Roberts wants to do, the difference in gain of the different 12AX7 (and 5751) variants, could potentially alter the bias settings (Pierre could answer this one as I no longer have my JOR to see if it does or does not). But, the type of output tube itself is a big consideration. The Ei KT90 tubes that came with the JOR for a long time are the most rugged, but are not very good sounding. Pierre and I both like JJ E34L and KT88 tubes best in terms of sonics. In my JOR, the E34L produced the BEST midrange I've ever encountered anywhere, though the KT88 will provide more low end and a bit more power. I'll add that I'd been using the new JJ KT77 in my DA60 for its combination of low end and midrange, though since Saturday I've been running the E34L, and am quite happy.

Until I got a tube tester, my JOR sounded fine, other than having to goose up one tube like crazy. It turned out that KT90 tube was shorted (caused no damage to the amp or my speakers), but getting it right sure provided a lot of peace of mind.