In Reply to: How reliable have your SET or SE tube amps been? posted by RGA on April 13, 2016 at 23:37:05:
RGA - you have a Personal Message emailed to you on 11 April regarding reliability and suppliers of LM-219IA.I've been using SETs for about 14 years and have had no reliability issues. As you say, the tubes can't be expected to last for ever, but the other electronics should be equally reliable to a similarly-built SS amplifier - and possibly more so than a Class A one. Class A tends to run very hot, whereas it's only the tubes on an SET that get hot and they should be well ventilated.
I'm presently using Chinese Consonance Cyber 845 monos, previously British Art Audio PX-25 and 845 Carissa. Others in my system were not owned by me, so no long-term experience.
I suppose one reason that SETs may be less reliable is that many are hand-built by humans in small works. The bigger brands building large runs of SS amps often use robots which may, or may not, be more reliable! However it's likely that the small producer with his soldering iron and oscilloscope will do more testing to ensure it's running perfectly before sending to customers.
Peter
Edits: 04/14/16 04/14/16
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Follow Ups
- RE: How reliable have your SET or SE tube amps been? - cawson@onetel.com 01:21:49 04/14/16 (0)