Tired of Problems with Tube Equipment

I have had problems with both tubes and SS but only a few times over 30+ years.

to some extent you need good common sense to use tube equipment. on occasion I will get a tube flash when I power up my amp and immediatly shut it down for about 10 minutes and then power back up and let it idle for at least 20 minutes and slowly turn it up, those tubes never give me a problem. I am sure if i had just played it the first time it would have flared worse and eventually taken out a cap or worse.

some people will ignore these signs and they are the ones who should own SS.

I'll weigh in here with my personal experience with tube equipment. I've owned an Audio Note M1 pre-amp and P2 SE amplifier since 1995. During that period I have never had a problem with the equipment in any aspect. Tubes eventually wear out, but that's to be expected with extensive use over the expected life of the tubes. That's my experience. Well designed tube equipment should perform as designed and as expected. Parts failures can happen as there is a finite life span for such parts as tubes and capacitors.

Aw shucks. The only interesting people at a party are the ones who come over and just stare at all the pretty lights and the fantastic McIntosh blue faceplates.

It all sounds kinda good, too.

"Smeyers - can you give us a rundown of some of the components you've had the problems you've described?"

Please take the following for what its worth. I've enjoyed all the equipment mentioned despite the problems I've had.

BAT vk-5i preamp - one channel popping and cracking due to blown capacitors in one channel; repaired by BAT.

Wright Sound Mono 10 amp - not sure what the actual problem is since I have not sent this one back yet, but one channel is way down in level. Also had to replace stock cheap speaker connectors which broke quickly. One of the switches that control the input connection has worked itself loose.

Cary/AES Sixpac amp - Blown bias pot, Jensen Oil Cap, and several resistors (oil from blown cap got all over the inside of the amp). This was an expensive repair and the bias is now much more sensitive on the repaired amp as compared to the other. I've also had more than my share of blown power tubes on this amp.

Audio Mirror SET 45 amp - Blew many fuses until replaced with higher value than supplied slow blow (Ok'd by the company). One tube not biasing (bad solder joint; I resoldered connection). After owning a very short time, two of the tubes won't bias within spec, and now getting popping noise from one channel. I do by the way really like the sound of the amp.

Lector Digicode 224 DAC - this was a two month odyssey as initially there was no-one in the U.S. that knew anything about the unit and Lector had no U.S. distributer. One channel was down in level that turned out to be a burned out component.

In contrast, I've had an Adcom GFA-555 solid state amp that had been in service for 20 years (and I bought it used); the only problem was a power switch that was easily replaced.

Stew I couldn't agree with you more...
I started out with tubes, migrated to solid state, tried to go back to tubes, but couldn't stand them.
And I really tried to give it a fair shake too.

Class A or hybrid A/B mosfets are my favorites.
Tube PA's: unreliability, heat, microphonics, rushing noises, expense.
Although I do have a Golden Tube pre that's quite nice without the nuisance.
All depends upon the design I suppose?