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Warming-Up Amps w/o Inputs or Speakers Attached

How dangerous is it to warm-up amps without inputs and speakers connected? When running A/B comparisions between gear it's difficult to truly gauge differences when one piece is good and hot and the other stone cold. What about the differences between doing this with SS vs tube amps? Can you just plug them in and let them cook?
stickman451
swampwalker's avatar
swampwalker
5,138 posts
 
What Al said. Most tubes are cheap compared to the price of good output transformers.
herman
2,290 posts
 
.

I'll respectfully disagree with that but have no hard science to back me up.

"Most tubes are cheap compared to the price of good output transformers. "

Either tubes or transformers are more likely to be damaged.
The price has nothing to do with it.

I have seen circuits designed to protect output tubes from kickback. I have not seen any designed to protect OPTs. I have seen quite a few output tubes fail and very few OPTs fail.

For those reasons I think it is the tubes that are in danger, but in any case, running tube amps without a load is a bad idea.

.
rrog
1,958 posts
 
I agree with Herman. It is the output tubes that are in danger and running a tube amplifier without a load is a bad idea.

Why not use an 8 ohm resistor in the place of speakers?
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