How do u know when its time

[orangine2002]

Hey guys

A little bit of a noob question...it's the first time that I own a tube amp (DR roadster) and was wondering how do you know when its time to change your tubes?

Thanks

 

[212Mavguy]

Unless there is some sort of premature failure due to mishandling or poor production quality showing up in any tube(s), I think it's fair to say that Mesa's engineering core personnel had a design goal to have long tube life in their amps and still deliver overwhelming performance.

One of the effects of a colder class ab power tube bias commonly found in the (push pull output section) guitar amps is longer tube life for those cold biased output tubes.

It would not be a stretch to say that since most clubs need only a fraction of the power available in most of the Mesa line of guitar amps for volume requirements that you could reasonably expect to change the power tubes first...within an interval of perhaps 1000-3000 hours of use.

The more hours spent when cranked up to a large part of total output available, the lower in that 1000-3000 range will come that time to consider retubing.

Peace.

 

[lerxst88]

when you crap your pants with fear wondering what just happened to your expensive mesa because it doesnt turn on or sound right or perform as well as it should have.

...then change tubes.

 

[MrMarkIII]

Here's what I did when I bought my first Mesa. Bought a set of spares. After a year or so, change them (power tubes only - pre-amp tubes last much longer).
Frankly, I noticed no big change, and this is a year of four-hour gigs every weekend, at all kinds of volume levels.
So I kept the new set in and changed back after another year.
If you're on a budget, you can get by with one spare pre-amp, one spare rectifier (you only need to change it if it breaks, and most of the time you can switch to solid-state), and a pair of matched power tubes.
Hope this helps.

 

[thunda1216]

when you crap your pants with fear wondering what just happened to your expensive mesa because it doesnt turn on or sound right or perform as well as it should have.

...then change tubes.

Hear, Hear! I've been using my Heartbreaker (purchased in 2000) with the same Winged C power tubes for five years now, 30 hours/week average, and just last week one of the power tubes became noisy. I relpaced it with another Winged C and am still truckin!' All the stock mesa sino preamp tubes became noisy after about two years of usage, so a little time spent on ebay and all the preamps were replaced circa 2002 with NOS USA Sylvanias 7025s, no failures yet. The rectifier went out in 2004, causing the fuse to blow. Switching to the ss rectifier did not solve the problem. I put in a NOS GE rectifier tube, but it actually did *not* sound as good as the Chinese one! I installed a new Shuguang 5AR4. It sounds great and has not failed me yet! I carry the GE as a spare...

ty