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Can using a bad tube hurt an amplifier?

If you're using a tube for a while, and everything's fine, and then voltage changes over time gradually, and then it damages an amplifier? are amps Built with controls to prevent that from happening?

How can you trust using a tube if it potentially could harm an amplifier?

Assuming You're using the correct tube in the slot provided.

 

emergingsoul
mclinnguy's avatar
mclinnguy
1,085 posts
 

Just had Fedex drop off the replacement Gold Lion 300b, inserted it in the amp, and voila, music is playing again. 

Just one $5 220uf Rubycon capacitor was all that needed replacing. 

Lucky the cap went first, and not after various other parts as in this component:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaEiO_9qMwY

 

feldmen4
131 posts
 

@kennyc +1

guscreek
82 posts
 

My 1948 Capehart has a main power supply in which the xmfr winding for the rectifier tubes is fused to prevent catastrophe.

wspohn's avatar
wspohn
651 posts
 

Thinking back to the days when every drug store had a tube tester in it, it would have been nice to have foreseen needing one in the future and picking up one as they were pulled from the stores.......

niodari's avatar
niodari
378 posts
 

Yes. My SET amp was  damaged (the capacitor below the tube and then other things, it was not easy to repair it) when an El-34 tube was blown up. In fact, I was in front of the amp watching how the tube was blown up, I powered the amp down but the damage was almost immediate. 

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