Assesing the damage; OT related.

[jamison162]

I have a question regarding possible damage to my amps OT, tubes, or anything related.

I ususally get to rehearsal around 6:30; so my band mate/guitarist usually turns on my Orange RV50 around 6pm to let it warm up. We've both noticed that after 20-30 minutes of warm up, it's just "there" tone wise.

So last night I get in and he had gotten distracted or something and inadvertently turned the amp to "ON" rather than "Standby".....and did not check to see of the head and cab were hooked up - which they WERE NOT, I had unplugged the speaker cable for whatever reason (to cover the head). No guitars were plugged in or played through it during this period obviously.

So what is the potential damage or issues that could result, other than a blown OT? Power Tubes? It played fine, sounded a little off but not any more than usual; what I mean is that every week something sound just a little different than the week before and I tweak my eq a little here and there.

It did seem as though I was running the treble higher and the volume was tuend up more to get the same output level; I think so anyway, it's all relative and could be due to temp/humidity changes.

Anything to worry about here? How many hours do you usualy put on your power tubes before you change them? I'm still running the stock EH6V6's.

Thanks

 

[slider313]

I'm sure there's a shorting jack so if the amp is turned on without a speaker connected your output tranny would be protected. As for tube changes, I tend to give power tubes about 9-12 months with normal once a week practice and gigging once or twice a month.

 

[BBQLS1]

I doubt there was any damage.

 

[jamison162]

I'm sure there's a shorting jack so if the amp is turned on without a speaker connected your output tranny would be protected. As for tube changes, I tend to give power tubes about 9-12 months with normal once a week practice and gigging once or twice a month.

A shorting jack? What if the cable was plugged into the head but not the cab? Would this defeat that feature?

 

[John Phillips]

Yes, but if the amp is not inherently unstable with no load - I'm not sure about that amp, but very few are - no damage will have occured anyway.

It requires a significant amount of output power to be generated before any damage can occur. That will happen if the amp is unstable, but otherwise you would have to be actually playing through it.

The easiest way to tell if the amp is unstable is to deliberately unload it while watching the power tubes carefully. If they start to glow brighter, even at all, either inside the plate structure or with increased blue glow, you have a problem. If they don't, don't worry about it.

 

[jamison162]

What about tube life, any wear damage done or would that also require actaulyl playing through it without a load?