Why no heated gear?

I understand what Elizabeth is saying. Another analogy, if you pour hot water on the body of your car or heat it another way in the winter, is it going to run better? Of course not because it needs to be heated internally, the engine needs to be warmed up. It's the same with your gear.

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Your analogy doesn't hold water. Pouring hot water on your car is a terrible analogy.. A better one would be if you store your car in a heated garage so it is heated all the way through, not just on the surface. In that case it would definitely make a difference, just like raising the internal temperature of an electronic component no matter how it is done will make a difference.

This is done all of the time in precision test equipment. Temperature sensitive components that would affect the precision of the instrument if their temperature was allowed to drift, for instance the components that determine the frequency of a precision oscillator, are kept in little "ovens" inside the device where their temperature is precisely controlled. They are typically heated since it is usually easier to keep something warmer than the ambient temperature than it is to keep it cooler.

Since all Elizabeth can do is claim "you missed my point" and can't offer any reasonable explanation of why heating something up externally or internally will make a difference, I'll consider the case closed.

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I don't know about your garage, but mine won't heat up to the operating temp of an internal combustion engine.

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You guys kill me. All of you are posing to be so
knowledgeable about audio and not one of you could point him
in the right direction for the right component for his
situation. Amp warmers and preamp warmers are readily
available if you know what hi-fi shops to visit. They are
very expensive though. I run monoblocs, so I use four of
them. I do have an extra one for my tube cd player, but I
found out that it wasn't really necessary. I paid $2700 for
each tube amp warmer. I will sell my extra one for $1800
and guarantee it for one year. My solid state amp warmers
cost $2300. I will sell it for $1500. Lowballers will be
ignored.

Amp Warmer

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I'm surprised that Elizabeth gave up. Or maybe not, judging by some of the other comments. So let's examine this issue from the ground up.

When we say that a piece of (tube) gear needs to "warm up", what are we specifically referring to? Does the audio quality change because the case is warm? No. The knobs, wiring, lamps and switches? No. The PCB, if present? No. The transformers? No, not so much. The tubes? Aha! Now we are getting somewhere.

So why does the sound change when a tube heats? To keep it simple and avoid big words like anode and cathode, let's just say that a physical change occurs between the tube's internal elements. A tube does not operate efficiently until all elements reach the optimal operating temperature. While heat is required for the tube to operate, too much heat will destroy the tube. In fact, one of the reasons that power tubes need to be biased is to compensate for the heat potential between the an... never mind.

So why can't we just heat the tube with an external heat source like a heat gun or a heated blanket? Because "tubes" are vacuum tubes - the glass envelope encases the internal elements in a vacuum. No gas (atmosphere), no heat transfer can occur from OUTSIDE the envelope. See what you can learn when you don't sleep through High School physics class?