I need to retube my amp and I'm having trouble deciding whether I should buy my tubes from Audio Research or buy them on the open market. If you have any experience with this I'd appreciate your help.
And if ARC is like cj (which I assume they are), they aren't using tube testers to select their tubes. They are testing the tubes performance in circuit, esp. for noise. One would be surprised by the reject rate.
what it seems you're paying extra for is their implied warranty to fix the amp - tube suppliers such as tubedepot (not affliated other than as a customer) offer 90 day warranties on the tubes as well
The advantage to buying ARC tubes include the 90day warranty, the fact that they have been burned in at voltage for 24hrs. so bias drifting is minimized, and are matched to the amp you need them for i.e. the biasing window of adjustment is optimized.
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