Stupid tube tricks

[F1nut]

Earlier tonight I blew up one of my $100.00 NOS 1957 Sylvania 5751 tubes doing something I knew I shouldn't be doing.

AGH!!!




Rant over :mad:

[SolidSqual]

Oh god I feel for ya' This kinda reminds me of the time I tried to replace the batteries to my Dodd Pre with an all metal screwdriver.

[engtaz]

Sorry to hear.

[Keiko]

Today has not been a good day for tubes, pres, batteries or CDs. :(

[wutadumsn23]

<~~~ knocks on wood, I can't afford to have any "problems" :-)

[george daniel]

I once(this year) caused two EL-34's,on seperate ocassions, to light up like I've never seen them do,,sitting back,,looking/listening,,they start to glow at first, then it's on to cherry red,,almost like a saturn rocket lifting off,, I'll tell you what,, that'll make you move your ass,in a hurry,,LOL,,yep,,for me,,it was stupid,,just could not wait to get those puppies unboxed,biased,and in the system,, fortunately,,we have a great tube guy in Atlanta,, seems I was a little too generous with the bias,,BTW,,they did sound sweet,just before the tubes went up.:o

Also,, never open a box with a tube inside while walking back from the mailbox,,if you have to,,make sure that you are on the grass.

[nikolas812]

I once(this year) caused two EL-34's,on seperate ocassions, to light up like I've never seen them do,,sitting back,,looking/listening,,they start to glow at first, then it's on to cherry red,,almost like a saturn rocket lifting off,, I'll tell you what,, that'll make you move your ass,in a hurry,,LOL,,yep,,for me,,it was stupid,,just could not wait to get those puppies unboxed,biased,and in the system,, fortunately,,we have a great tube guy in Atlanta,, seems I was a little too generous with the bias,,BTW,,they did sound sweet,just before the tubes went up.:o

Also,, never open a box with a tube inside while walking back from the mailbox,,if you have to,,make sure that you are on the grass.



Geez. Must have been a LOT of bias to do that??


I also have lit up a tube like I have NEVER seen before... When building my tube amp I wired it up wrong and ended up sending the voltage that was supposed to go to, two power tubes. All to one.:eek:


I have also dropped a rectifier tube coming back from the mail box. It was toast after that... Good thing it was relatively cheap..




Nick

[AudioGenics]

1957... that was a good year

[NJPOLKER]

Earlier tonight I blew up one of my $100.00 NOS 1957 Sylvania 5751 tubes doing something I knew I shouldn't be doing.

AGH!!!




Rant over :mad:

What were you doing?

[jimmydep]

The phrase an audiophile never wants to hear............


OOPS........followed by.......OH $HIT!!!!!!!



Sorry for your loss

Jimmy

[TNRabbit]

What were you doing?


The REAL question is, did you get VIDEO of it?!? :p

[hearingimpared]

Bummer!!!!

[janmike]

That's the pits. So, ...

[madmax]

I once tapped on a power tube with a pencil to see if I could hear it ring through the speakers. Exciting yes, good idea no... The fireworks were amazing though.
madmax

[Face]

I knew I should have kept those tubes. :D

[TNRabbit]

so.....connecting them to the speaker wires & cranking it all the way to 11 is NOT the way to treat tubes?!?

[george daniel]

come on,, keep em' coming,, we've all done things to tubes,,that we may not be proud of,, now is the time and opportunity to confess,, all will be forgiven by the Great Tube,, but hurry,,as this window will close soon,,, I am the undisputed "KING" of the Master Bias.

[kawizx9r]

:eek: well im reading up on this and putting it in my list of things NOT to do. Just went tube last week so this is all new to me, all I know is I love the sound quality i get from it

[zingo]

What were you doing?
+1


I have also tapped on tubes to see if I could "hear" them. Turns out you can and it doesn't sound good. I once tried to run them submerged under water as I heard it makes the tube glow look REALLY cool...

[madmax]

I once tried to run them submerged under water as I heard it makes the tube glow look REALLY cool...

Interesting concept. Did it sound more liquid?

[W WALDECKER]

I had a Teslovak KT88 Let go in my Sonic Frontiers SFS 80 a few years ago and it looked like a lightning storm in a bottle :eek:

[F1nut]

What were you doing?

I ain't tellin'

[heiney9]

I ain't tellin'

I do hope you didn't injure your pecker. A man shouldn't go thru life with a non fucktioning pecker.

H9

[dkg999]

Jesse - did you try to clean the inside of the tubes again?

[SCompRacer]

Were you juggling tubes while hot swapping and dropped one? I can juggle two tubes OK, but not a quad.

[F1nut]

Funny stuff guys :D

[Ern Dog]

Ok ok, I'll confess. I once was too excited to hear how a nos RCA 12AX7 sounded and I was going too fast and didn't notice that one of the pins was bent and didn't go into the little hole, then powered up my amp.....

I heard this Really loud whistling sound and it scared the shit outta me. I moved quickly like a ninja to turn it off. Luckily no damage :o

[BlueFox]

Earlier tonight I blew up one of my $100.00 NOS 1957 Sylvania 5751 tubes doing something I knew I shouldn't be doing.



What were you doing?


Pissing on B+, or, more likely, pissing off B+. ;)

[nadams]

Wow... some of the stuff you guys are posting on here brings a whole new meaning to "bottle rocket"

[zingo]

Interesting concept. Did it sound more liquid?

It does create an unbelievably liquid mid range...


I still like the CL ad that was posted here a while back where the seller had removed the glass from around the tube to try to improve the sound. He claimed the tubes were still in "like new" condition.

[sucks2beme]

My tube stuff goes way back. As a GI, I used to work around big
power tube transmitters. I had all the card drawers open, and dropped a
screwdriver through. That was interesting.
I also was standing next to a guy that pulled open the power supply drawer
on a TACAN while it was hot. There's a shorting bar in the back that drops down
to short out the power out. It blew two really big wirewound resistors,
which the fans blew up in the chassis, taking out about 12 other tubes.
It was like a bomb going off. Glass and crap flying everywhere.
My home use of tubes has been pretty dull. But I most likely will get my turn.
It's almost time to refresh the AR vt60 tubes.

[NJPOLKER]

I still want to know what Jesse was doing to, or with that tube. Sounds kind of funny to me. We should probably run a survey as to what's the popular belief. I can only imagine what all would be said.

[amulford]

Man, that just plain blows... they don't make 'em like that no more...

[tonyb]

K-Y jelly and tubes...a big no no.:eek::p

Sorry Jess,couldn't resist.

[F1nut]

more likely, pissing off B+.

Yeah, like that.

[lelananh]

Thanks so much for sharing the post.



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[heiney9]

The above has hidden script..................REPORTED

[mmadden28]

come on,, keep em' coming,, we've all done things to tubes,,that we may not be proud of,, now is the time and opportunity to confess,, all will be forgiven by the Great Tube,, but hurry,,as this window will close soon,,, I am the undisputed "KING" of the Master Bias.

OK well, there was this time once with a tube and a gerbil and a visit to the ER...oh wait a minute ... nevermind--wrong kind of tube...carry on. :o:eek:

[Midnite Mick]

I once turned up my system without allowing the tube ample warm up.....not pretty. The tube burned out and very thick smoke came from one of the amplifiers. Very scary to me.

Regards,
Mike

[dragon1952]

I installed a new quad of power tubes once, and thought I remembered how to set the bias. I found what I thought was the test point and adjusted the bias pot for -41V. The manufacturer had actually said .41V , which should have been measured across a 10ohm resister, which would equate to 41mA. To make a long story short (as well as a couple tubes), the -41V at the erroneous test point was the equivalent of a bias of around 100mA. With the bias set correctly, the measurement at that test point should have been around -56V.

[Ern Dog]

Just over the weekend, I made a rookie move....

I turned on my amp and heard a pop and one of the power tubes wasn't glowing. So I cracked the hood and replaced the tube- still nothing. So I replaced the fuse, but didn't put it in right and when I powered up the amp my power tube blew out and the fuse.

So I went through 2 fuses and 1 power tube in one fell swoop! At that moment I was seriously contemplating trading it in for a SS amp and screw all the hassle.

[TroyD]

Earlier tonight I blew up one of my $100.00 NOS 1957 Sylvania 5751 tubes doing something I knew I shouldn't be doing.

AGH!!!




Rant over :mad:

Ok, this MAY warrant a phone call...

[treitz3]

Sooooooooo, what was it that you were doing exactly? :D

Or do I want to know?

[halo71]

Sadly I have never owned a tube stereo amp. But I have owned a few guitar tube amps. And one time while experimenting for better tone with a few different tubes, in an old Ampeg amp. I powered off the amp, with chassis out of cabinet. And grabbed a tube without thinking how hot it was!

Another time in another tube amp I touched a loaded capacitor, had ringing in my ears for a few days afterwards.

[dorokusai]

I blew a whole quad setting bias on a monoblock while half-drunk. Ended up having to buy an octet because they were irreplaceable tubes....oh well. I didn't learn anything from the experience unfortunately.

[RuSsMaN]

That's what you get for only being half drunk, idiot.