Tube biasing problem


Hi guys, i'm not a newbie in the world of audio, but somewhat a newbie
with tubes. A few months back I took delivery of a beautiful CJ tube amp. It
is rated a t 100 watts per channel, and has 2 sets of quad el34's. Being this is an older amp, the tubes that I received with it are also at the end of there life span. They are not matching quads neither. One set is Svetlana, and the other setare JJ's

My question, just recently I am not able to bias 3 of the tubes. CJ has the biasing pots with the leds which works beautifully. At first I thought there was a problem with the pots, but when I rotate the tubes, the 3 tubes that I was not able to bias before still cannot be biased in different pots. The properly working tubes can be biased in any of the pots so I ruled out the amp itself, and figure it has to be the tubes. Is this normal for a tube to resist biasing at the end of it's life span? As far as the amp performance, I am still playing music, and everything seems to be working properly, and there is no noise coming through the speakers. Any help from experienced users would be greatly appreciated. Thank you
tag1993

Showing 1 response by apachef1

You answered your own question. the tubes in question are at the end of their usable life. Continuing to run the amp with your current tubes puts a harder demand on the one tube that has some good operating life. This will cause that tubes useable life to be used up much faster.

Purchase a matched quad new or NOS and get all four tubes biased and you will have no worries and keep your current one good tube as a spare for future use

Ed