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In Reply to: RE: service life of Gold Lion KT66 reissues? posted by paul2 on April 17, 2014 at 05:54:12
These are made in Russia by New Sensor. I have been re selling their tubes since more than 10 years, but I recently decided to stop with this company. You can PM me for the reason.
Problems I had myself with their KT... tubes were always related to gas. This was never immediately detected as such. When I had such tubes, they would at first show the bias go down, or hum, or have a tendency to occaisional grid shorts. And not show a problem on the "gas test" with any of the tube testers I have, and getter was looking good still.
That is why I always say, any getterology is for the birds. A bad tube often has a good getter. Just, a really bad getter is white or half-eaten, but long before that happens, the tube malfunctions while the getter looks nice still. So a nice getter often means nothing.
I threw all the bad testing NEW SENSOR tubes in a box, and many came out a few years later with a white getter, showing the true cause of the problem. I still have this junk box, and more and more tubes are getting white getters.
When they start to hum after 3000 hours, it can have many causes. Like too early wear out of one tube of a pair. Or one changed it bias so much, the pair is off balance because if that. So you still have two good tubes in the pair, but no matched pair any more. Or, it is related to gas problems, like described above.
KT66 should to my opinion run much longer than 3000 hours, as this is by itself a very rugged design. With this I mean the real KT66, with the vintage shape KT66 plates. So not the modified 6L6.
I had a major dispute with them, as they refused to give incoming inspection criteria to me, which I can use to test their tubes. That was a few years ago, you can search for that on AA under the EML Moniker. I guess it's still online.
Jac
Follow Ups:
This is the top side and you can see the flashing is very good after 2400 hours.The new reissues have reddish bases.
These are my original reissues I bought in late 2007 and they have at least 2400 hours on them and they show little flashing wear.I abuse the hell out of them and I have never red plated them but came close when a cap failed in my Sargent Rayment amps but they are as strong as ever.I have plenty of vintage GEC KT66s,some NIB and the rest testing close to new but most everyone of them I had to secure the lose bases which is so common on the KT66s with a top mounted plate structure.I NEVER had to do this on the reissue Genelex at anytime.
"KT66 should to my opinion run much longer than 3000 hours, as this is by itself a very rugged design. With this I mean the real KT66, with the vintage shape KT66 plates. So not the modified 6L6"
While some tubes do that,the Genelex is not one of them..I know they had a brief issue which has been corrected but you know,that stands to reason when you build as many tubes as they do.
There is no tube that is infallible to failure.Much of the tube failures I have found lately were due to dirty or loose socket pins or not being correctly biased.With SED gone,the only octal tube makers left are New Sensor,JJ,and Shuguang and maybe a couple small ones like PSvane.
Honest amplification is better than excessive 2nd order distortion anytime.
Does that mean your website is out of date? You have 'PL' tubes listed but is this a new batch of tubes or just old pages? Just curious.
big j.
"... only a very few individuals understand as yet that personal salvation is a contradiction in terms."
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