OK New issue with JJ tubes!

[Steve Conner]

Well, the "tone quest" is one thing, but I think electric guitarists of most skill levels would benefit from owning a nice tube amp that didn't break down too often.

[soundmasterg]

How high? What topology are you using? What kind of screen dissipation?

Survival has been poor with high plate and screen voltages? That sounds odd, as the old EL34 are supposed to thrive at high plate voltages, and as I understand it, the E34L and KT77 were supposed to be designed to enhance EL34 reliability in high voltage applications, no?

I'm asking becuase I'm interested in a high reliability "skinny" tube for a 530V application where 6x6L6 might have trouble. Would be interested in hearing more about what survives vs. what doesn't.

I built a Vox AC100 clone that runs about 470V in fixed bias mode and a bit less in cathode bias mode, but in the cathode bias mode, even with larger cathode resistors for a colder bias than stock still runs pretty damn hot, but the JJ KT77's I run in there are perfectly happy. I get them from Eurotubes though and had them give me the ones that would bias up as cold as possible.

Greg

[Mick Bailey]

I am not going to diagnose the amp, tell the guy a parts list and let him go source stuff and bring it back.

I had a customer who could get everything cheaper, so as I'd got the amp stripped down I let him go out and get the parts. He came back with 10 of this and 100 of that and a set of 4 EL84s. He then complained about how some places wanted £20 minimum order to qualify for free shipping, and he couldn't buy just 1 resistor. He was just looking at unit costs at 'end column' pricing. Then he expected me to buy the surplus components but I said I'd already got them in stock and didn't need them. The closer on all of this was when I said he'd done me a favour in buying the tubes as I didn't have to offer a guarantee on them.

He looked like he'd just dried his face on a hotel towel and discovered a 5 inch skid mark.

[Steve Conner]

When I see people going to such lengths to save a penny here and a penny there, I think "time is money". Either the miser believes his time is worthless, or it actually is worthless because he's no good at anything.

[Steve A.]

When I see people going to such lengths to save a penny here and a penny there, I think "time is money". Either the miser believes his time is worthless, or it actually is worthless because he's no good at anything.

I was an HVAC service mgr for several years and if the customer supplied the part we did not warranty the part or the labor to replace it if it failed during our normal warranty period. And that was only if we decided to take the job.

We eventually switched over to flat rate pricing (the main purpose of which was to conceal the fact that we were charging 2-3x our advertised labor rate.)

I can't imagine someone going to all that trouble just to save a buck or two on resistors.

Here's an idea- what if you charged $5 to cover shop materials and small parts? I would go so far as adding a line for it on a work order so that the customer could see that it was a standard charge (that you could waive if it wasn't necessary like for just replacing tubes.)

Steve Ahola