Sacrifice to the Tube Gods...

[vibroverbus]

So I just got home last night, first time in my music workshop since Christmas. After getting 90% done on a Jazzmaster re-assembly, I plugged into my BFPR to test the new tasty Novak PU's I just put in... but in doing so I notice that the bright green standby light on a Traynor YSR-1 was shining brightly.

Turns out that amp had been on for some time... how long is anybody's guess, but 3 months would be the outside figure. How/why is also unclear yet, since 1. I'm pretty annoyingly meticulous, 2. the amp doesn't have a cab, and I NEVER plug heads in without a load (see #1), and... 3. well a host of other reasons associated with #1.

Could have been the power switch flicked when it was moved, and of course I have 2 or 3 other conspiracy theories ready for why it couldn't possibly be my own stupidity (workmen... neighbor kid who lusts after my gear... anal-probing aliens...)

At any rate, no harm done except cooked tubes from filaments being on for who knows how many months... Amp actually works fine, except if you play for a few minutes the pre-amp tubes seem to run out of steam - the sound gets a bit thin and muffled and you start getting more reverb as the various stages start to fade at different rates.

Obviously time for a new set of tubes, and perhaps tonight I'll have some fun with the tube-tester tosee what they look like - conveniently I had marked all the tubes in there with a rating when I put them in... also although all the pre-amp tubes were various vintage items, they weren't particularly strong NOS ones, so it's not like I wasted a set of tasty vintage black-plates or anything...

Anybody done anything similarly stupid? I'm interested in seeing how the tubes read after such a long standby abuse...