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Trevor Wilson[_3_] Trevor Wilson[_3_] is offline
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Default Introducing a New Horse to the Stable

On 4/09/2019 6:11 am, Peter Wieck wrote:
Howard Stone's experience with the Radford amp brought this on, so please forgive the rant-like process here.

Guys and Gals:

When introducing a new piece of equipment to the system, please take NOTHING for granted, not even it it is brand-new, fresh from the box. And if it is used, or, much worse, vintage-used please be exceedingly cautious. Equipment failure can be anything from minimally annoying to spectacularly annoying to genuinely dangerous to life and property.

I have no problems running my 56 year old tube system in my office, and leaving it unattended for hours at a time. It has been through my bench, sat for hours on a metered variac, and I created a temperature-table using a heat-gun such that if I see changes over time, I have a pretty good idea where to look for trouble. But when it came to me, I had no such faith.

In all seriousness, if one is going to pursue this hobby at more than an occasional level, one should obtain the basic tools necessary to do so safely both for the equipment and the real-estate. This is not to suggest that such would have prevented Howard's experience - but he very probably would have seen it coming in time to prevent the special effects.

If there is a consensus, I would be glad to take a picture of my (very basic) bench, and (very basic) tooling, with an explanation for each item and the purpose(s) it services.

Thoughts?


**Yeah, one. I don't get the attraction to valve (tube) equipment.
Anything that is done with valves, can be done, better, cheaper and with
more consistency with solid state.

I mean to say: I get why hipsters embrace the stuff. Hell, my business
has undergone a renaissance thanks to hipster. Old Marantz, Yamaha,
Sansui, Accuphase and the others are suddenly desirable and, therefore
valuable and worth repairing. And for an old fart like me, well, I cut
my teeth fixing that stuff. No surface mount, or microprocessors in
sight. Well, not if you exclude cassette decks.

But, Hell, valves start wearing out the minute they're first switched on!

And, before you get started, I've done a few blind tests with valves,
vs. solid state. The very best valve gear is VERY hard to pick from
decent SS gear. It just costs a whole lot more (check out the cost of a
decent, multi-interleaved output tranny sometime - YIKES!). And then, of
course, there's those pesky valve replacements at regular intervals.
I've replaced a full set of valves in a big power amp more than once and
seen the cost run to a couple of grand.

And yes, I've owned and built valve stuff too. Not anymore though. I
have better things to do with my life. Noisy and microphonic valves. No
thanks. You can stick 'em where the Sun don't shine.


--
Trevor Wilson
www.rageaudio.com.au

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