Hi Paul I restore antique radios and encounter tubes 80, 90 and even 100 (hard to believe)years old that are still good. They still have their vacuum and work well.A tube will decline when used but they can last a long time on the shelf.

I love mixing old and new equipment. I use a Sansui AU-555A as a preamp and run all kinds of DACs and streamers through it. Fifty years of hifi all working together and it’s lovely!

Tubes, or valves as we call them in the UK obviously degrade over time but I believe capacitors degrade far quicker, particularly in areas where the running temperature varies. Going from room temperature to fairly hot especially in valve amplifiers must degrade the capacitors over time. Also the output transformers can become noisy and hum loudly. Still love the valve sound though.

If that amp is currently working and "untouched", I'd be more concerned with the capacitors and resistors being out of tolerance or on the failing side. Any electrolytic of that age should be visually inspected for any bulge, pimple, or leak. then they should be tested for capacity and ESR. Resistors, especially the old carbon comp ones in the high voltage paths and high current paths need to be checked for tolerance and noise. Those old tube amps are insanely simple compared to transistor amps when they came into vogue. BTW, it's not just the electrolytics that go bad, so check everything. And those transistors don't last forever, either. They can become noisy, many time with what is called "shot noise", where the noise comes and goes, but the warmer it gets, the more it happens. Plus, transistors are less forgiving than tubes when it comes to overvoltage/spikes. The mechanical nature of a tube lets it "bounce" somewhat to such phenomena, but solid state tends to blow a hole in the PN junction(s) very quick. Plus, there are more than enough older transistors that have issues with lead (as in legs) corrosion getting inside the case, thereby destroying the connections to the die. FETs, are static sensitive, so there's yet another layer of safety needed to work with them and another failure point. They are not as tough as proclaimed.

Old and new here, 1970 Sansui 4000 receiver, PS Audio Stellar Gaincell DAC, WiiM Pro with a linear power supply and a pair of Zu DW6 Supreme speakers... Going to build myself a tube/valve amp here in the near future, getting the parts together right now. ;-)

I am a BIG (physically and mentally) fan of tubes. I have a tube output in my DAC, a CAT fully-tube pre-amp, and a PS Audio Stellar M1200 amp setup that has a tube input. I have heard small differences when swapping cables and other peripheral things, but NOTHING compared to a recent venture into the area of tube changing. This is one time when I'm going to go vintage in my rant because I had been using really good quality modern tubes, but changing everything out to NOS made such an striking difference, I was astounded and am still being astounded every time I listen. For those of you who don't know, NOS stands for New Old Stock, meaning tubes that were manufactured "back in the day", but were never or hardly used. The truth is that back in the 1930s thru 60s when tubes were everything, they were made from better materials and built to higher standards. But before you run off and start buying them, you need to know that there is a LOT to learn about things like gain and compatibility and noise-levels and understanding how certain tubes do better with certain choices in music listening. You need to buy from people who test the tubes and do the RIGHT KIND of testing. I am fortunate in having a brother who understands this stuff about 50 times more than I do, and his suggestions made differences in every corner of my listening experience - tone color, depth, width of soundstage, presence, isolation of instruments, "disappearance" of speakers. It brought the musicians into the room in every dimension. The beauty is that these NOS tubes aren't always super expensive and can be bought off eBay (make sure they take returns). But you do have to know what you're looking for.

I would recommend Fernando get in touch with Upscale Audio regarding tubes. I'd bet that they would have exactly what he is looking for and when it comes to tubes, their advice is hard to beat.

Hell, I so love my vintage equipment: ST-120 with KT88s, DIY refurbished Voice of the Theatre A7, my own passive crossovers, Teac A-3340S., DIY RaspberryPi /Alllo Boss DAC / MusicServer (2TB) is the only modern implementation. My own design and build power conditioning. I've got a lot of time and $$$ invested in that rig, and I'm absolutely delighted with it! .....whatever makes you enjoy the music ❤

Valves 🇬🇧 Tubes 🇺🇲 can be VERY long-lived, particularly small preamp tubes. I'm sure there are modern replacements that are of equal quality to old stock.

Love you work Paul! Tangent: I'm restoring a set of Quad II Monoblock's, but want to feed then with a digital/DAC frontend from a streaming service. My hearing drops at around 9K, not 20K so what should I focus on, Tidal vs Spotify, Roon vs Volumio, up sampling & Filters, vs analogue the whole way through? Yes! I am well down the hifi rabbit hole....

Sometimes it's not just replacing the tubes. You may also need matched pairs and/or have to measure and tune the tube bias (if they are in the power stage and not only preamp) - which is a work for specialists. Otherwise you may be disappointed with the result.

New gear is so good and extremely cheap (except good speakers). Douk has a $50 tube preamp better than most old stuff.

You can always recap your vintage equipment with modern capacitors, then you will have the best of both worlds😁

If you want to, try new tubes, but Good Grief, keep the old ones and make sure you know exactly which one was in which socket so that if you want to go back it will be precisely as it was before.

I disagree with Paul. Tubes do not age just sitting in their boxes, only with use. You can put 80 year old NOS tubes in a tube tester and they will measure as new. They also usually last much longer in use than modern Russian or Chinese tubes. Back in the day they made the more common tube types by the tens of millions, so there are still NOS tubes to be found.

I think it's perfectly fine to mix vintage with the modern. In my opinion, aside from digital Class-D amplification, solid-state and especially tube amp designs are really mature and haven't changed dramatically in the past couple of decades. Same can be said for most of the speaker designs out there. What has changed are the sources we use: streaming, digital media, DAC's, etc. So, if I am completely happy with my front-end (amps, pre-amp, etc.) and especially speakers, I would hold onto them the longest and look at "modernizing" my digital sources...especially DAC's...when the upgrade bug bites as that technology is constantly evolving.

Thank you Paul. Always sensible advice. Your the Yoda of HiFi!

It's hard to answer questions like that. The thing I worry about is making sure that, if the tubes are changed out, is to make sure that the new tubes are biased correctly and that the old tubes, marked as to which sockets they came out of and making sure that they're biased correctly if you're putting them back in. You can destroy the tubes and even damage the amp if you're just tube rolling and not monitoring tube bias on any amp, especially an old one.

I have tried , and preferred , Psvane 6SN7 triode preamp tubes over 1950's Sylvania NOS tubes . Unsure of life span , but sonically superior in every way .

Hey! Thanks for this video! I've always been a fan of the smaller snub nose revolvers since the days of Get Smart. I'm 60 and Canadian so guaranteed I'll never hold one. Also not a gun aficionado. His had a visible hammer so this isn't his but still damn beautiful.

Tubes got trickier to acquire during covid. I think there are only 2-3 manufactures of tubes left worldwide at this point.

Paul thanks for the video. I can't speak to original vs new tubes. What I can speak to is playing around with some of the mainstream phono cartridges. There are a few models that I owned when in my early 20's that over the last few years I "replicated" because I wanted the sound that my memory said was there. The thing is that over the years I remembered things as from back then WAY better than they actually are in this case. Often times I think we tend to have rose colored memories. Not always mind you but it does happen. At least for me it does ;)

I own a pair of VTL Deluxe 300 monoblocks manufactured 1989. The units have been updated & upgraded, & recently serviced. New old stock (NOS) tubes are increasingly hard to get, but do have a stash of them. Output tubes are even harder, some of my new 6550 were failing, so I replaced them with new Gold Lion KT88 which are supposed to replicate the sound of the old classic. So although they are not "exactly" the way they were in 1989, I belive that with the mods & tube selection, they are "even better". Again as Paul says, I respect those who want the very original sound, but good luck sourcing those NOS tubes!

This guy needs to test out the tubes and get back to us cause it would be nice to know the results!

Paul, the question was which is better, not which you prefer due to nostalgia. I love the 1971 Mach One but new Vette is better. My 1981 280ZX was my favorite. It didn't corner as good as my 914 and didn't have the torque like all my late '60s, early '70 V8s but it was the most fun.

Personally, because of my own experience with tubes, I'm on the same page with Paul (maybe a super old 300B vintage type power amp might be a different cup of tea, which Paul seemed to allude to in regards to using new or newer old stock) however, take extra care pulling those puppies in and out - you're dealing with the "mechanical" connectors of the tube sockets, those can be degraded because of excessive tube rolling. I'm running an ARC front end, both phono and line stage and I've always felt that some of the underground turmoil with the Ref6SE has a lot if not everything to do with it's tube compliment - for whatever reason, most especially it's power supply regulator tube - keep that puppy freshened up and although the preamp tubes can last beyond what ARC recommends, again, something I've personally done, I've also found that benefits can be had by going somewhere just beyond 1/2 and 3/4's of what ARC recommends for tube life span. The cyro thing I don't really get, doubt it's something that can be measured, but having messed with it, I couldn't go back - on that one, I might be hypnotized (a "give in" for you cable haters) but they do seem to last longer if indeed they don't actually sound better too.

A tube is a tube. The size of the glass envelope will make a difference giving a better reverb

I never listened to tube gear when I was young. People who yearn for vintage sound must have experienced it. I do have AR valve amp but I hardly use it. Valve pre-amps I do use

You could go NOS on the tubes but they tend to be a lot more expensive. There's some really good newer tubes out there now. I know there was a time when people got away from tubes and the manufacturing of them and the quality went down for a while but quality control and the know-how is back to make them good again. Tung-Sol for example make great tubes.

If you were that keen on restoring an older piece of any equipment, capacitors are also things you should look at replacing. You can damage components if power supply caps (for e.g.) are not in good condition. Not to mention the poor sound quality they will give.

Tube rolling… 😊

There are already a few comments correctly stating that a NOS tube that is not faulty, has an almost unlimited shelf life. But on the other hand, Paul is ignoring noisy vintage transistors. These where prevalent in Japanese vintage audio equipment. The reason is that the passivization was not well understood. So ironically vintage transistors are suffering from the very problems that Paul attributes to vintage vacuum tubes.

with electronics I go modern without any chance of a doubt, modern just performs much better... and with speakers, well, that's another story in my humble opinion good vintage speakers sound much better than cheap/entry-level modern ones.

When I was still actively making music, the power amp tubes in my Marshalls (tube guitar amplifiers) were completely replaced every year - and because the Voodoo factor is extremely important in this profession, this was done consistently. I don't think anyone heard any major differences, but they felt they were "on the safe side".

I see new old vacuum tubes online all the time in original boxes. They are still around. Facebook marketplace

Yo Paul , 53 years of servicing hi end audio tells me transistors absolutely DO NOT LAST FOREVER. Outputs, small signal, RF devices , IC’s , all end up in the garbage.

Not just tubes how about electrolytic capacitors, coupling capacitors, drifting values with carbon resistors all affects sound quality over the years. So even just replacing tubes to original quality, no vintage equipment can achieve exact original sound quality as it was introduced back then, unless possibly changing all parts,100%, back with new original parts if can be obtained after 20-50 years. LOL

What about a place in the middle? My amps are about 15 years old, and isn´t going anywhere. Maybe some Audio hygiene down the path? How old is "vintage"? Cheers from Denmark.

Rock on Paul ,

......and don't forget to recap it too 🥹😝

My problem with vintage audio is based on my singular experience with a mid level 1980s 'receiver' that I loved. I use it up until about 10 years ago but things started failing. Pots went bad, panel LEDs failed. Each time a problem came up I repaired it only for another problem to pop up. It finally failed altogether and I gave up. On the other hand, I have a Levinson amp with a Audio Research tube pre-amp that are about 24 years old and sound great. I tried different tubes in the pre-amp once and there was a difference but not what I'd call improvement. I have had no intentions of changing anything from stock.....except that I am now getting a hum through the speakers that was never there before. When the system is warm it goes to completely silent and I am wondering if that is a tube issue.

A lot of modern stuff sounds clean and lifeless compared to vintage amps. Only problems are the aging. I rather pay $1.000 for a refurbished high end vintage integrated amp from the 70's over a new integrated for the same money. Back then The Stereo Equipment was such a big investment so the hifi manufacturer had to make really great sounding stuff.

The other problem there is that all the resistors and capacitors have aged as well and should be replaced. The resistors have probably drifted in value and the capacitors have dried up causing them to drift. Besides that who makes tubes (valves) these days?

DITCH the vintage gear and go current. I did just in the past few years, it was hard to let go of the nostalgia…. But GAWD I'm so glad I did… it's like going from 240p TV to a 4K flat panel. I love my music so much more!

In the old car hobby many people are not keeping them original anymore. They are doing resto-mods where they update the steering with rack & pinion, installing modern engines, and updating suspension to make them drive and feel like brand new cars. I personally like old cars 100% original though but there is something for everyone. I have old cars back in the 60's and I just got a new C8 corvette and several in between. So your car analogy is not spot on anymore but I understand what you are saying.

Which Tubes? Russian or Chinese? NOS?

Replace the capacitors too.

NOS vintage tubes, if you can afford them. I have seen the sheer markup on reissue types as well so pick your poison

Not really a real question. Just try you need replacement tubes sooner or later anyway

In this video we learn of two areas where Paul's opinion is less useful. Vintage cars and tube amps. Similarly, don't ask him how to cook the perfect steak. But when we talk about most audio subjects his opinion is great.

Staying vintage. Im not stupid to throw my money away on modern ....

Those of us who want tone control and loudness have no choice.

sorry Paul.. transistors don't last forever.. heat is their enemy, and nothing "lasts forever" anyway..

❤

What’s that big tube amp on the desk?

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