Glad to hear you found your tubes.
I would suggest, while you are waiting to get them back from the dealer, you contact the vendor you bought them from and ask them the procedure they use to test their power tubes. Do they first pre burn in the tubes before testing? IF so, how many hours are the tubes burned in before testing? If they do not burn in the tubes before testing then you should check the bias often during the first 25 to 30 hours of use of the amp. Maybe less during the next 25 hours or so of use.
Curious how often did you check the bias of the power tubes before? Roughly how many power on hours do you think you had on the old tubes? Average life of a power tube is around 1500 to 2000 hours.
The blame game.
You want to put all the blame on the manufacture of the amp for all the problems and length of time it took to repair the amp.
Email you received back from ARC.
’Thank you for choosing Audio Research and the REF75. I suspect you had an internal tube arc. The internal tube short can also take out a plate or screen resistor. So just replacing the tube will not fix this problem. The resistors also need to be replaced. You can confirm this by checking the bias for this tube. If the bias reads zero, a resistor is open. This is an easy repair that our distributor in Australia can do.Who made the decision to let the dealer try to repair the amp instead of sending the amp to the Australian distributor service center?
How long did the dealer have your amp?
5 to 6 months?
Do you think ARC knew the repair status of your amp? If yes why would you think that?I then contacted my dealer and freighted the amplifier to Brisbane for repair. This was done in June of last year. I included all of the above tubes in the package in case they were needed. I also would have liked the amp to be upgraded to SE status using the tubes supplied if possible.
In September/October last year I enquired about the status of the repair and before Christmas enquired again. After again emailing AR, I was contacted by the Australian Distributor who told me that the service agent in Brisbane had been trying to get parts for the wrong amplifier and that the amplifier would be transported to Melbourne for repair.
When you sent ARC another email, with your concerns on the progress of repairing the amp, how long did it take for ARC to email you back telling you the amp would be shipped to Melbourne to be repaired?
How long was the amp in Melbourne?
In January/February of this year, I was contacted by the Australian Distributor and had to supply proof of purchase because there was a dispute over whether the amplifier was in fact under warranty when the fault occurred.So how long did it take from the time the service center in Melbourne received the amp, emails back and forth to you, put it on the bench, determined the damage, ordered the correct parts and new circuit board from ARC, received the parts, installed the parts, tested the amp, probably 24 hours maybe 48 hours of actual power up time, contacted you the amp was repaired, and finally shipped the amp back to you?
If I was in your shoes I would be plenty pissed at the dealer you bought the amp from. I would never do business with him again. It is obvious his service tech was in way over his head when it came to repairing your amp. Hell, he didn’t even use the correct model number for ordering the parts he thought he needed to repair amp.
Where, again, were your new tubes all this time?
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