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Post by lpdeluxe on Apr 24, 2008 10:38:03 GMT -7
I am new to DR z world. My stang ray has blown power tubes recently with very little hours of usage. Can someone tell me the average hours of usage they are getting from a set of EL84's
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Post by benttop (Steve) on Apr 24, 2008 11:50:08 GMT -7
I think Myles Rose has indicated that we should be getting about 300 hours, but I know Brad Paisley pulls them after 30 hours. So you should be somewhere in the middle.
My first set on my Stingray lasted about a year and a half, and I was gigging an average of about four to six nights a month during that time frame, so they actually did pretty well.
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Post by brad737 on Apr 24, 2008 18:58:48 GMT -7
I've heard that new tubes get about 300 hours. Evidently, NOS tubes last a bit longer.
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Post by lpdeluxe on May 8, 2008 10:53:21 GMT -7
Thanks for the response's
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Post by DRZ on May 8, 2008 14:39:06 GMT -7
Thanks for the response's Here's a little additional info. Not sure why but JJ EL-84's have raised there prices twice so far this year and there quality has decreased by a factor of four. We have had many failures in house, and the JJ's were the MOST reliable tube for many years, I can't understand why. I have mentioned it to Myles @ GT and they to have had a very high level of rejects this year from JJ. Give me a call ipdeluxe and I'll see if I can help .
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Post by myles on May 8, 2008 15:58:46 GMT -7
Just a side note .... for anybody with new amps from the Doc that have GT tubes in them, if you have any powertube issue within 90 days or any preamp tube issue within 6 months call me at GT .... toll free at 1-800-459-5687 and ask for either me (before 11:30 or so PST) or Rick Benson (all day PST 7:30am - 4:30pm) and the tubes will be replaced under warranty. You don't even have to talk to the Doc, or anybody else first.
If you run EL84s for more than 300 or so hours you will probably notice a very big difference when they are changed. You really don't notice how bad things got until you change them.
I had a few folks ... Erik Halbig / Casey Pollock (Sara Evans) ... Scott Patton and Thad Beaty (Sugarland) that ran amps such as Matchless DC-30's, Bad Cats, and Vox AC-15s that ran an entire tour with the same sets of tubes. All those folks were quite surprised what happened and then were surprised at what happend after only 30 shows .... 100 or so hours. In the case of Casey Pollock with his Matchless, the sound folks were complaining things just did not sound quite right. Investigation quickly showed that one of the four tubes in the output set was broken in half and inop. The remainder of the tube had to be removed with a needlenose. The other three had a 1987 datecode ... the year the amp was made. So ... just because sound comes out of an amp don't think it can't be better. If you talk to Buddy Whittington he will tell you how my Carmen Ghia compares to his .... how mine is stronger, cleaner, louder and more expressive. What the differences was .... a new set of output tubes about with about hours on them before he borrowed the amp. And he is a guy that takes care of his stuff way more than most folks do.
Bottom line here though .... if you have a Z amp with GT tubes they are covered by the GT warranty if the amp was bought new or can be verified that the tubes were installed within the warranty period.
As a side note .... I went through about 150 JJ tubes today and they were much less consistent than they have been in a while. This last run is a bit rough and will have a higher reject rate in the GT testing process than the last run. This has been reported to JJ and when we tell them something and supply test results they usually come back to us very quickly and tell us what their problem was (they are very upfront) and they resolve it. In some cases it is a change that was made but there have also been cases of a shipping container to the US being dropped or hard landed with resultant damage.
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Post by Don on May 13, 2008 17:11:46 GMT -7
I have two Carmen Ghias. One has JJ EL84s in it, and the other has Groove Tubes. The difference in the tubes make them different sounding amps, but it's so obvious, the one with the Groove Tubes just sings out more than the other. I am very happy with GTs in my amps.
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Post by brad737 on May 14, 2008 8:12:23 GMT -7
My Stingray has GTs with a #6 rating in it. I know that GT has received a lot of flak over the years because most of them are re-labeled. But when you consider how tightly GT matches the tubes, it's a no-brainer. Being able to tweak the amp by the distortion rating, and have every tube working in synch makes a huge difference in the amp's tone. I honestly can't imagine a "sweeter" sounding amp than my Stingray.
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Post by gheston on May 14, 2008 8:39:53 GMT -7
This is probably the most practical topic we all discuss.
I'm old enough (55) to remember my dad taking me to the local hardware store to use their free tester - a big stand-up console with sockets for every type.
Once you have used your Dr. Z amp for a few hours, and it's working perfectly, not much else is likely to fail; i.e., only the tubes and the power-on bulb are realistically going to wear out in an owner's lifetime of normal use. (OK resistors and capacitors, too).
Professionals like Brad can afford to change power tubes after 30 hours - and so they should - their income depends upon everything working at 100% - not just tubes but guitar strings, etc.
Strings are cheap, so a no-brainer, and dead strings are pretty obvious.
For the rest of us, we play a dangerous game between throwing out perfectly good tubes, and playing for months with sub-standard sound because the "failure" happens gradually, over time.
Just before I bought my first Z, a Stingray, I experienced what a timely tube swap could do on our Fender Hot Rod DeVille. It totally changed the amp and blew us away. I promptly traded it in on the 'Ray, and never looked back.
But I hadn't learn my lesson.
I was told by a good dealer who knows his guitar stuff inside and out that the 'Ray takes care of biasing, so the sound would deteriorate "quickly and obviously" when the power tubes started wearing out. WRONG.
He's a friend and didn't want me to waste money on premature tube swapping. He should have added, "but swap them out after nn hours of playing no matter what...".
When I realized we had been playing the 'Ray for almost two years without new tubes, I grabbed a quad set of GT's that we had been saving and installed them.
PRESTO CHANGO! Brand new Super-Ray. Darn it all, anyway (not my exact words at the time).
My point is that for many months we had been loving the 'Ray's tone, etc., but it was operating way below it's capabilities.
I proceeded to change EL84s in our other amps (yes they all use them) that had been used for over 6 months, and had the same revelation each time.
Life is too short to save a few bucks and play through a world-class amp hearing sub-standard sound.
In the absence of a viable tube tester, I will just do the math. On our bedroom amps it's less critical but on our "good stuff" one full year is now the absolute maximum, and those that get more use will be fed new GTs every six months.
The pre-amp pieces are another discussion, and I'm no expert.
Anyway, I'd love to have a better solution to determining when I've hit the "drop-off" point. I'm a single dad with two 20-year-olds and four tube amps, with another on order. And Dad (that's me) is in charge of tube changing.
Any better ideas will be gratefully received.
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Post by Hohn on May 20, 2008 19:14:35 GMT -7
Great post, Neuro..
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