Does tube gear fully "warm up" if no signal?

[User211]

FWIW, the CJ ET5 takes about 500 hours or so to break in the capacitors. I've read enough (and have personal experience with other CJ preamps) to believe that this is true.

That's Teflon caps for you, Gordon. I have some CuTF V-Caps in my new Lampizator L4G4 tube roller's DAC. They put 200 hours burn-in on them at the factory, then the dealer put 100 hours on them. Very nice of them. Assuming they did, LOL!

They sounded fine at 300. Might have 400 hundred on them now. Not much change - maybe a bit.

The DAC itself is excellent and beats my vinyl rig. No - it really does. Very happy with it.

 

[edwinr]

twich54, it looks like your hairy dude is on the way home from a big night out...

 

[Gordon Gray]

Amigo,

Is that a Yellowstone Park photo?

Gordon

 

[twich54]

Amigo,

Is that a Yellowstone Park photo?

Gordon

Yes it is.............and it was when Shirley and I later in the week while driving through Laramie, stopped for lunch I remembered......."Gordon lives out here somewhere" .......duhhhhhhh, we actually had lunch at a little hamburger joint in Jackson !!

 

[slowGEEZR]

Just curious. I've had my C-J tube pre-amp for a few years now, and typically turn it on >30 mins before listening. However, once I start playing music, it seems to sound even better after another 30+ mins. Just wondering if I'm really "warming it up" just by turning it on, or is it better to run low-level signal/music through it during the "warmup" period? (FYI, it's otherwise in low-power standby mode when powered off).

Alan,

I have read that the reason most tube amps sound better after being on for a period of time is that all the tubes have finally reached their steady bias state. During warmup, the tubes emissions increase until the tubes finally reach their normal operating temperatures. This bias stabilization can take up to 45 minutes or longer.
This makes sense to me as surely, a designer would design his/her amp to use a tube at it's best operating bias. A friend has a set of tube monoblocs that show the bias readings in nice large numbers and it takes at least 45 minutes for the readings to stabilize.

 

[MPS]

^ This is true. Usually recommendation is to keep equipment on 30-60 min prior to adjusting bias level. This enables tubes to reach normal operating temperature and stable operating level. Signal or no signal has no practical effect on reaching this status, in fact most small signal tubes have pretty much full continuous bias current since operating in class-A.

Talking about burn-in of equipment/components is completely another story..