AmadeusMozart
Well-Known Member
That's why I built my amp so it could run in 45 degrees Celcius. During the Covid pandemic Bill Perkins retired of making tube coolers so no more Pearl tube coolers to be had.
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Tubed audio and the heat
- Thread starter Mr Boochie
- Start date
Man, that is a shame to hear about Bill!
I wouldn't be without the Pearls on my preamp or amps...they just do not let the tubes run up to such high temperatures as tubes without them...it makes tubes in the Modulus 3A last a lot longer.
So, I looked all over his website and didn't see any reference to closing and no mention in a couple of eBay listings of his I looked at...stock of the two items said hundreds available...
I have no doubt that my amps would run in 113 degree temps, I don't sit around in those temps at all, I've disliked Summer ever since I had a heat stroke in 1980, and it only gets worse with each passing year...
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drew_t
Well-Known Member
84 in a dry climate area isn’t that bad, especially if you have a room fan going to move the air around. One zone in my house is cooled by an older, probably under-spec’d, central air unit; if we have a couple days of insanely high temps (110-115), low to mid 80s is about as cool as it can keep the rooms, even if it’s running more or less continuously. It’s warmer than what you’d want, but really not that uncomfortable.
Add humidity like I imagine you must have there in Arkansas, and it’s a totally different situation.
Live in Oakland,CA where a lot of us still don't own AC. Never really needed it before and fans for my 1400+ sqf house sufficed. That has changed and will be probably getting it next year. Most of this week during the brutal heat wave I've been playing my tube gear in the morning while it's still cool, then moving over to my only piece of solid state, which is a McIntosh MC2105. But only have two preamps and they're both tube. Even with that change the house temp approaches 90 by late afternoon. But today, after turning off my MC225, fully intent on moving to the MC2105, I changed my mind and moved to the MC240. Put the big fan right in front of me and have been enjoying the music all day.
A little sweat ain't gonna kill me.
A little sweat ain't gonna kill me.
Your weather up there in Wisconsin MAY reach 80 degrees this next week....down here we may get down to 89 one day if we are lucky...All you need are some fans, I've been using the D150 all summer
Apples to oranges...it's 95 at my neighborhood weather station right now with a heat index of 101 and an Ozone Action Day...so much fun...
Waukesha, Wi
Shawnnnn
Well-Known Member
Good point and no thank you, that's too hot for me. I'll take a little snow in the winter and stay up north.
invaderzim
Super Member
We hovered around 100-115 much of last week with an emergency alert going out to cell phones basically saying to reduce power usage to "protect public health and safety". So I took off my fleece jacket.
My tube amp is single ended and only uses 90 watts but even then, when it gets that hot I rotate in my Rod Elliott P3A or Ampslab LM60Mk2. Ironically, it has been too hot to build the Rod Elliott P101.
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AmadeusMozart
Well-Known Member
Wow, he has started up again. Thanks for looking and letting us know, really appreciate knowing this.
I know he moved and wanted to work on his motorbikes and Parts Express had a fire sale of his coolers. I suppose things changed. Very happy about this as I've got them on some EL506 that are next to unobtainable. (7868 are an older iteration and can be used as a substitute but have double the distortion).
FWIW Same thing happened a few times with Gery - Transcendar. Website is still down, this time saying "under construction" which is different from before.
The two inches of blue foam and new white steel roof that we put in when I was working reduced our air-conditioning requirements substantially. We get by with two window units in our rather large house now. What I can't figure out is why it didn't seem to help much with the heating bill in the winter.
I also cannot understand tube folks who run AC while listening. They must have quieter AC than I do. The window unit in the dining room raises the noise floor at my listening position from 30 dBA to 45 dBA. If you can hear your AC come on, it's lowering your S/N ratio, maybe not as much as my 15 dB, but still...
Listening to gargantuan tube amps at RMAF 2016 in a stuffy room with a dozen stuffy people and the AC blowing insufficiently was not a good way to showcase a hi-fi system.
I also cannot understand tube folks who run AC while listening. They must have quieter AC than I do. The window unit in the dining room raises the noise floor at my listening position from 30 dBA to 45 dBA. If you can hear your AC come on, it's lowering your S/N ratio, maybe not as much as my 15 dB, but still...
Listening to gargantuan tube amps at RMAF 2016 in a stuffy room with a dozen stuffy people and the AC blowing insufficiently was not a good way to showcase a hi-fi system.
Central air, can't even here ours running unless you directly under the intake in the hall.