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we 300b life

I've seen a WE amp, using NOS WE300B tubes, with impressive tube life. The owner did not know that leaving the amps on shortens tube life, so he left them on all the time. After 6 years on, the we300b tested at 80%.
However, the WE 300B was designed to have very long life, its intended service was in telephone lines on the bottom of the ocean. You can't swap tubes often two miles deep... I think the specifications there were for 17000 hours of uninterrupted service per tube. There is an amp on the bottom of the Pacific ocean from US mainland to Hawaii, with a 300B amp on the bottom every few miles. During 40+ years less than 10 tubes failed......
There's no mystery about WE300B. What makes it very expensive, is that they were factory run for 6000 hours, and then tested. If they did not test as new after 6000hrs, they were tossed. Unfortunately, some of these failed tubes circulate as WE 300B, and people ask big money for them, and the buyer is not realizing that's not a WE300B, but a failed 300B. I guess that can be one reason why different people have so different opinions about them, as you can't know if you listened to the real tube or the failed one, which, instead of being destroyed, ended up in someones warehouse.

Try to do this on current production tubes, and see for how much it can be sold..... 6000hours of electric bill into a 300B is a fair sum.

BTW, that WE amp had an excellent tone, I thought I am listening to a 2A3 amp.

Janos

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