Thanks Ralph! This may be fear-based, but I want to minimize the chance of tubes failing while being played in my amp (afraid of blowing resistors and such). My amp is a VAC Phi 200. I know that your amps are relatively immune to tubes blowing, but I don't know that this is the case for the VAC. Anyhow - I guess my question is: would it be wise to avoid gassy tubes as they may blow sooner?
Tube Tester Mutual Conductance Falling - What it Means?
I just purchased 16 used KT88's and tested all of them in my calibrated Hickok tester. Eleven of them had stable readings between 4700-5600 umhos. Five had readings that started up in the 4600-5000 range but fell to the 3900-4200 umhos range before stabilizing (I'm not sure they fully stabilized, but the falling slowed down a lot).
Can someone tell me what such a falling reading means? Is the tube weak or unreliable or ????. Thanks, Peter