Can you touch the tubes?


I was talking to someone at the tube store about replacing some KT 150 tubes and he said it was perfectly fine to touch the tubes.

I've always thought you're supposed to handle these things very carefully with white gloves or a microfiber cloth.

Handling them with my fingers makes it easier to pull them out , insert them more securely.

Does it really matter if my fingerprints get on the glass or should I clean them off with a microfiber cloth after I touch them?

emergingsoul

I have a rubber suction type tube puller around here somewhere but I never use it.

If the tubes are hot I just use a sock.

Roger Modjeski (RIP) aka Music Reference, The Authority on tubes said '"yes, it's fine to touch tubes just get the peanut butter off your fingers"

You’re thinking of those awful halogen lamp bulbs popular in the 80s. Tubes are perfectly fine with skin oils on them. They really don’t care. You’re actually far more likely to damage tubes from them slipping through some silly cotton gloves.

You’re pushing/pulling those tubes in/out of their socket-that’s done by the base of the tube.

Vacuum tubes powered WWI/WWII. There wasn’t concern for MIC white gloves and heeding goofy audiophool "rules".

Touch the glass if you must- no one is looking.

If a tube has a separate base, you pull and push it in by that base to prevent separation of the base from the glass envelope.  But there is NO need to be concerned about oil being deposited on the glass.  That concern comes from what happens to some types of light bulbs.  Oil deposited on the glass of such bulbs carbonizes from the intense heat.  That black spot will absorb light from the bulb, rather than letting the light pass through, and this causes that spot to heat up so much that the glass fails, which causes it to explode.  This kind of heat an light production never occurs with audio tubes.