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Massdrop x Eddie Current ZDT Jr.
01 / 09
Massdrop x Eddie Current ZDT Jr.
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Product Description
With great control of the entire frequency range and a far bigger sound than its small size suggests, the Massdrop x Eddie Current ZDT Jr. rivals tube amps in the $1,500 category Read More
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3396
Official
Nov 13, 2019
Do I need to be careful with leaving the amp on, since it has tubes?
Fayne
2581
Dec 24, 2019
As previously mentioned, tubes have a finite lifespan. The stock tubes have about 2000-5000 hours before they will start sounding worse. Do yourself a favor and don't run the amp 24/7.
Also, do yourself a favor and don't turn it on and off constantly. A good rule of thumb is that if you're going to use it multiple times in a day, just leave it running all day. At the bare minimum, let it run for a few hours before turning it off. If you do turn it off, let it cool down. Elements in the tubes can be damaged (or have their lifespan reduced) by rapid temperature changes caused by numerous successive power cyclings.
Fayne
2581
Dec 24, 2019
Below is a list of reasons to replace tubes outside of the sonic pleasure of tube rolling:
- If a channel goes dead.
- If a channel goes super quiet.
- If a channel goes super loud.
- If a channel develops very loud buzzing.
- If a channel (or channels) are too microphonic.
Fayne
2581
Dec 24, 2019
There isn't much to do other than dusting and keeping liquids away from the unit.
At some point you'll need to replace the tubes as they're consumables (just like incandescent light-bulbs), but that should be after a few thousand hours of use. If you really like this amp and use it heavily, it is very worth the money required to get a spare set of tubes now; you never know how availability of NOS will hold out.
You can also use stuff like DeoxIT Gold on all the tube contacts to help deal with corrosion and provide strong contact. This isn't required, and is only really useful when rolling NOS. I personally do it as a habit with all my tubers.
Fayne
2581
Dec 24, 2019
Other than a good audio-source and signal path, nothing is *needed*. I mean, feel free to run it through a tube preamp with tone control to get your personal flavor or what have you, but the important part is having a clean strong signal. Clean signal means a DAC/preamp/phono amp cabled up with good shielded RCA.
You can roll the tubes to get subjectively better sound. The 6ZH1P preamp/input tubes (the small ones) are easily replaced and will give the most sonic changes or gains. I suggest the (subjectively) cheaply priced and quite readily available GE 5654W and Voskhod 6ZH1P-EV. Whichever you pick, you want them as a matched pair or you will get channel imbalances. I personally use Voskhod 6ZH1P-EV date coded 1984 and couldn't be happier.
The 6N24P power tubes are a bit more difficult and won't give that much of a sound gain. You can find 6N24P very easily for very cheap ($1-3 per), quality ECC89 or 6FC7 are a bit more difficult and likely expensive. I suggest not rolling them unless you've got a failure or reeeeeeallllly think that annoying buzzing is actually coming from the tube (protip: it probably isn't; either your cans are too sensitive and giving the tube hummmmm, your mains are dirty and you need a power filter or UPS on your audio stack, or you've got massive EM interference nearby and should try moving the amp away from wireless gear (phones included)).
But seriously, it is your toy to play with. :)
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