Gold Lion KT-88 tube longevity, thanks Jim McShane

BNR_1 wrote:I was wondering, separate of sonic qualities, would the KT-120s perform longer the then KT88s?

Out of curiosity, how long did it take you to rack up 5,000 hrs?  I can tell you if it was me it would probably be 6 to 7 years at the rate I listen to my system.

Thanks

BNR_1 wrote:Good info.  Thanks all for responding.

Deep I have never listened to my TV with my tube amps.  Got to give that a try one day.  Problem is that my TV uses aerial and in my neck of the woods, I catch practically no channels.  This is what led me into listening more music.  Before moving here my listening was close to zero.  In hindsight, catching very little channels is a blessing.  I focus more on soft listening and catching up on reading.

deepee99 wrote:

BNR_1 wrote:Good info.  Thanks all for responding.

Deep I have never listened to my TV with my tube amps.  Got to give that a try one day.  Problem is that my TV uses aerial and in my neck of the woods, I catch practically no channels.  This is what led me into listening more music.  Before moving here my listening was close to zero.  In hindsight, catching very little channels is a blessing.  I focus more on soft listening and catching up on reading.

Ditto here, unless you want to pay $100/month for satellite. We got a Roku box for $80 and maybe watch a Netflix series or movie nightly for $8 a month. Some movies sound astoundingly good on the toobs. I have found that without network TV and its news channels my blood pressure has dropped by a third. The lack of spending money on blood pressure meds more than compensates for the cost of tubes every three or four years.

deepee99 wrote:Other than one out-of-the-box failure, I've had only one GL KT-88 go ka-blooey, and that was yesterday. Loud pop, and it took out the fuse. In ordering a replacement octet for the Big Boppers from my go-to Russian tube guy, Jim McShane, he looked up his purchase records and we calculated that that tube gave up the ghost north of 5,000 hours. (Its brethren are still huffing and puffing just fine but likely headed for the same cliff, so out they all go).
An 8-pack of GL-KT-88s costs about $450. That works out to just under 10 cents/hour for a full rack of output tubes for an M-125-type listening pleasure.
I don't exactly molly-coddle my tubes, but I keep the bias in the .5-.55 range. No point I can see in running them up to .6 or higher. The amps stay in Class A and I think Gold Lion has made the penny drop in terms of sound quality. No doubt MontanaWay's fiddling with the the capacitors has helped, too, along with the delayed start relay Bob/Roy designed.
So for less than $1 a day, all day long, you get the finest sound imaginable. That's less than a single can of Rainier beer, as Longmire would say.

audiobill wrote:I've been listening to the Sovtek 6550s recently, and can report that they are well made and sound great in the VTA amps. With supplies of kt88s drying up, good to know!

audiobill wrote:I've been listening to the Sovtek 6550s recently, and can report that they are well made and sound great in the VTA amps. With supplies of kt88s drying up, good to know!