Cary SLI-80 with one blown rectifier tube, BUT STILL WORKS just fine. How?


Question for the more tube savvy among us – thanks in advance for your input.


I powered up my Cary SLI-80 integrated tube amp this afternoon, sat down, listened, and everything sounded great. I left the amp on all afternoon, and sat back down for more listing this evening. Still sounds great.

 

BUT, now that it’s dark outside and there’s less ambient lighting, I just happened to notice there’s no orange glow from the left rectifier tube (the SLI-80 has one rectifier per channel). Upon closer examination, the rectifier appears to be blown, or damaged, or something. No glow, and the getter flashing is severally discolored. I don’t have a tube tester so I can’t be 100% sure. But visually it’s pretty obvious the tube is bad.

 

BUT, here’s the thing I need your insight on: The amp (appears to) still work just fine – both channels sound great. Even at higher volumes. Bias is good, and is stable.

 

So, what gives? Can a Cary SLI-80 amp, with one 5U4G rectifier tube per channel, still work as normal if one of the rectifier tubes blows?

 

I assumed, perhaps incorrectly, that if the left rectifier were to go bad, the rest of the left channel would go out also – or at least would not produce power – while the right channel would still operate as normal. I assume each rectifier is electrically isolated to only one stereo channel. Is that not correct? Are both rectifiers working as one, and if so, is the one that’s still good doing the work of 2?

 

How worried should I be here? If it sounds great and seems to work as normal, is it OK to continue to listen to it and wait for the next time I power it down to switch out the rectifiers? Or should I power down right away?

 

Thanks!

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128x128mhwalker

Showing 3 responses by gs5556

See if the tube is cold (carefully!). If it's cold and no glow, tube is dead and will not work. The only explanation is there has to be a diode in series with the rectifier. 
There are diodes in series to protect the power supply circuit. Just saw a picture of the innards of the amp. The rectifiers are tied in parallel to the AC mains and the diodes are upstream of pins 4 and 6.

What happens is that if either rectifier tube shorts, the diodes continue to rectify the forward voltage instead of frying the transformer or caps with an ac surge.

Replace the tube -- continuing this operation changes the B+ voltage (may be a few volts or tens of volts higher) and places stress on the amplifier.
Al:

Same picture I saw. The diodes are under the rectifier sockets and have the black heat shrink. The heavy red ac wires enter the anodes and the cathodes are connected to pins 4 and 6 and then they’re jumped over to the second tube socket. The rectifiers are just passing along positive voltage and providing the voltage drop.

Apparently Cary was guarding against the improbable cathode to plate short -- which seems to be what happened to OP’s rectifier tube. The 5u4G drops 44 volts across DC so the amp as running right now is that much higher to the other tube plates and should not be played.