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Tube Socket Reliability

About a year ago, I finished a new Stereo 70 (all new parts). I picked the Japanese Azuma ceramic sockets for the power tubes and for the rectifier. A few weeks ago, I rolled-in a fairly new set of power tubes and one of them red-plated. I tried to re-tension the contact for pin 5 in the socket where the EL34 red-plated and also rotated the tubes to different sockets. No red-plating anywhere right after that, though the event caused me to take the amp out of service.

I am pretty confident in the soldering to the socket lugs underneath. The amp is not old, and I am a bit surprised this happened. I could try cleaning and re-tensioning all of the contacts.

If not the socket (or the soldering), then what? The amp was running great for the past year, and I had just made a check of the internal voltages before the red-plate incident, and everything was right. Would you folks care to share experiences and thoughts on which currently available sockets may be more reliable, assuming it is an issue with the socket?

Thanks.
Peter



Edits: 08/14/14

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Topic - Tube Socket Reliability - petercapo 13:11:35 08/14/14 (45)

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