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Should I bake my vintage tube amps???

My father built his own tube amps. Two of them date from the mid-1950's. I don't remember his ever sticking them in the oven.
 
I'm surprised that no has mentioned it yet so I will.
The practice is goes back a longtime.ham operators did this after spraying down a piece of gear and then baking it in the oven to dry.
 
If you have to wash down a particularly dirty and crusty amp the oven can be your friend. Warming it up for a few hours will drive out the moisture that gets into places that you can't get to. I have no issue doing that, just keep the heat to a reasonable level.
I also bake paint on after it has dried enough so that the solvents have all flashed off. A few hours to a day or more after painting. It adds a lot of durability to the paint.
Sometimes amps are found in the trash or outside. They may have been exposed to rain so either bake it or let it sit in a warm dry place for several weeks.

BillWojo
 
We have threads here where people are washing units in the driveway with hoses. Surely low (170F) heat for a while will not hurt.

(Don't tube amps get hot?)
 
I get the concept, but not sure if I'd be comfortable doing it. I'll; stick with an hour or two outside in the sun, or some time in front of a heat vent. IME, most (not all ovens) are not notoriously accurate (temp-wise) at their lowest settings, and the temp can spike momentarily as they cycle on to recover temp. I'd hate to destroy a transformer winding in the process.
 
We do it with rotors, stators, pole pieces, commutators and transformers all the time at work. My company has been doing this for over 30 yrs and GE and Westinghouse before us. As long as you don’t rely on the ovens thermostat and use a thermometer (we use thermocouples attached thru out) and stay below 230 you will be fine.

Now that being said the only reason to do it is if you know it’s wet.

Edit: Fun fact, I have had water cooled Sonar cabinets working great when completely flooded with deminerialized water.
 
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I recently developed a process to vacuum impregnate vintage transformers with varnish, to solve buzzing issues. Before I do this, I do bake them at 150 for an hour, to make sure they're good and dry. Doing it with a whole amp would also drive away moisture, but I would be cautious because it could also melt any wax, and also, domestic oven thermostats are wildly inaccurate and don't always heat evenly. I sure wouldn't use a Mac 60 as the Guinea pig the first time I try this process, for example.
 
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