Tube Maintenance Schedule when running cranked

[GreatOz]

Good day,

I got a question on tube maintenance, namely replacing an biasing and how often I should expect to do this.

I'm running an Ironman II Mini attenuator on my (basically new) Mesa Fillmore 25 head.

You can see my settings in the picture, clean is on the left, "drive" on the right. I really like the sound on both my main guitars with these.

With the Master all the way up on the clean and almost all the way up on the drive, should I check out the tubes for maintenance any more than someone would normally with those settings?

Thanks,
GreatOz

[jeremy]

your masters are up but your gain isnt. you should be plenty of life

[Mincer]

This would depend on how much you play, how stable the power is (many clubs have terrible power). I would believe you can get a good sound without running the clean master so high. The tubes wouldn't be cooking as much.

[Bogner]

There is no legit answer to your question. When the amp starts sounding bad replace them. It is impossible to say that with those settings you have 119 hours left before they die with any truth whatsoever. Letting your amp warm up properly and having proper, clean power within the proper voltage of your amp is a huge help. Lowering down your masters can be a help but how much, nobody honestly knows. I wish there was a timetable on tubes. I have had some tubes last forever and keep sounding great and some I have purchased (nice expensive ones as well) and they didn't last as long or one would go bad, etc. Tubes are touchy no two are perfectly identical IMO.

[JMP/HBE]

Too many variable parameters to be definitive.
Run the hell out of it.

[beaubrummels]

Master being up doesn't mean anything. How hard you are hitting everything before that matters.

I've read advice to change tubes annually (which I think might be extreme); meanwhile I've ran amps for 5+ years without problems; just changed tubes when it didn't sound as good anymore. Sometimes it's not the tubes but other components that hurts the sound. It's important to just troubleshoot and fix the problem, not make changes just because time passed.

[jeremy]

running the masters up high just means you arent choking the signal coming into the power section. if your gain (preamp volume) isnt cranked then the output section isnt working overly hard. if you are running your gain high and master low then you are working the preamp hard but then knocking the signal down with the master so, again, your power amp isnt working overly hard

[GreatOz]

Ok, so what I'm getting is mostly "don't worry about it until I get a problem", which is what I was thinking anyway.

I never really ran into this problem in the past, but I always had the masters down and didn't know if running them so high would affect it or not. I just wanted to know if there was some weird thing I needed to be aware of.

Mesa describes the masters on this particular amp as more of a giant resistor on the main input (gain), which isn't running very hot anyway.

Thanks,
GreatOz

[Hsb]

I cant give you an answer, but Ive had the sa0sme tubes in my Marshall since early mid 90s and I believe they are just starting go out on me now. Granted Im not playing very loud, bedroom level but they are starting to flub out on me after a few mins of playing, esp switching from using a pedal as my distortion on a clean channel back to the amp's gain channel.

[PS412]

I am no expert on this but when I bought my first tube amp I asked a t.v/ radio repairman ( is there still such a job ) how long will the tubes last, he shrugged and said for a hobbyist 8 to 14000 hours. You can do the math but for some that may be 2 or 3 decades. He added less if its flying around the country or in the trunk of the car.
Also he said military grade will last much longer. I asked how long and he smiled and said doesn't matter. You'll be dead and the amp won't.

I am with Hsb. I have an amp from the mid 90's that has a couple of hard years on it but mostly hobby playing and the tubes are just starting to "go".

[JamesPaul]

Big bottles last a bit longer for me. My EL84's would die in a year or so, when I was playing them. 6L6, EL34 would go a bit longer. Listen to them, if they sound bad, replace them. FWIW, I always replace my PI when replacing the power tubes.

[jeremy]

i used to go through el84s much faster than anything else but i was also running the amp really hard. used to have a tube tester, well still do but it needs some love, and id test every six months and replace em when they were starting to read tired.

[Securb]

As all have said none of know if we did we would be happy campers. What I can tell you they will die at your biggest/most important gig. I would say bring a backup set of tubes or a backup head to gigs. I leave my SS Fender M80 in the trunk when gigging just in case.

[JMP/HBE]

You should get 1000 hours out of a decent set of current made power tubes easy, problem is the all aren't "decent".
NOS can go as high as 5000 hours.
Some NOS Blackburn Mullard tubes are rated for 10,000 hours.