Tweed,
Tubegroover makes two really salient points,
1 Proper speaker and amplifier mating is mandatory, it truly is the metaphorical marriage. A high quality tube amplifier can sound poor with the wrong speaker choice.
2 There are definitely tube power amplifiers that are very easy on tubes and there are tube with inherently long tube life. In some cases you can go years before having to change these tubes. For one example I currently use a tube (EML XLS 300b) where older versions are approaching 40,000 hours of use and yet continue to test new! That’s a lot of years of music loving enjoyment 😊. I believe for another example that the Atnma-Sphere OTLs provide long tube lifespan. These in addition to what Tubegroover mentioned above.
Charles
Tubegroover makes two really salient points,
1 Proper speaker and amplifier mating is mandatory, it truly is the metaphorical marriage. A high quality tube amplifier can sound poor with the wrong speaker choice.
2 There are definitely tube power amplifiers that are very easy on tubes and there are tube with inherently long tube life. In some cases you can go years before having to change these tubes. For one example I currently use a tube (EML XLS 300b) where older versions are approaching 40,000 hours of use and yet continue to test new! That’s a lot of years of music loving enjoyment 😊. I believe for another example that the Atnma-Sphere OTLs provide long tube lifespan. These in addition to what Tubegroover mentioned above.
Charles