How to Take Care of a Tube Guitar Amp

Congratulations on the purchase of your new (well, at least new to you) Tube guitar amp! Prepare for a lifetime of fun and happiness in the years ahead with your wonderful new toy!

Or be totally prepared to shell out lots and lots of money on tubes, cables, fuses and other miscellaneous repairs. But it doesn't have to be that way! In this guide, you will learn how to properly care for a tubed guitar amp from turning it on all the way to replacing tubes.

First of all, turning on your guitar amp.

While this sounds a lot like a no-brainer, tube amps are different than most lower costing solid-state amps. A solid-state amplifier is one that doesn't operate the tone through a series of electronic tubes, but rather emulates their effect using newer technology. On a solid-state amp, the power operation is simply switching the on/off switch to "on."

On tube amps, however, there are usually two switches to power it on. First, there's the standard "Power" switch. This switch powers on the amp (obviously), but it doesn't turn on the sound generating circuits. What the "Power" switch primarily does is power on the tubes. Powering on the sound generating circuits is usually handled by the "Standby" switch.

The best analogy for turning on a tube-amp is to treat it like a car in extremely cold weather- turn it on and let it sit for a few minutes before you press on the accelerator. In that same vein, when you turn on your tube amp, turn the power switch on first, let it sit for a minute or so, then flip the standby switch. While it may not immediately damage the tubes to turn both switches on at the same time, it can shorten their life-span. Especially in a colder environment, if the tubes aren't properly heated before hand, there is a good chance that the tubes may crack, thus rendering them totally useless and presenting an extreme danger to the poor soul unfortunate enough to have to fix the problem.

Now that you've learned how to turn it on, now its time to learn what not to do with it.

1. Don't turn it on without having it plugged into speakers/speaker cabinet.

Turning on a tube amp without having it plugged into a speaker system is a lot like having a dam without a spillway; if you don't have a way to regulate the power out, you will have disaster. In the case of a tube amp, it could result in burned out power tubes or, even worse, the amp its self catching on fire. Speaking of catching the amp on fire...

2. Make sure the OHM output on the amp head matches the OHM meter on the cab (or that the cab has a higher meter)

Once again, I'm going to use the dam analogy to illustrate what could happen. Lets say you have two dams, one that is meant to stop water, and the other is meant to stop lava. While the lava stopping dam can stop water, the water stopping dam can't stop lava. The lava would burn the dam and disaster would happen. If the the guitar head unit's OHM output is higher than the OHM meter marked on the speaker cabinet, the head will be damaged. And, once again, may burn out tubes or may actually catch the amp on fire. This rule actually applies to any kind of amp, so take heed solid state people.

3. Regularly check your cables.

If the power from the amp to the cabinet has no where to go, see the above examples. Seriously, fire bad.

4. Cable to Instrument, then to amp

Plug in the cable to the instrument, and then plug the cable in to the amp. The cable sends a weak electrical signal through the cable in to the amp, giving a little power to the magnets in the guitar's pickups. While it won't catch your amp on fire or permanently damage your equipment, its not a good idea to have the cable plugged into an amp with nothing plugged in on the other end.

Hopefully, using the tips above will help you keep your tubes in working order for your entire ownership of the amp. However, strange things do happen and sometimes tubes need replaced.

Some people will tell you that tubes should replaced in a regular fashion. This, however, isn't true. Many guitar amps will be able to operate on the same tubes for decades, depending on how often an amp is used and how well the amp is treated. Constantly changing the tubes is bad for another reason- it constantly changes the tone of your amp.

With solid-state amps, the tone generally doesn't change from head to head. Solid State Amplifier Head A will sound like every other Solid State Amplifier Head A, but won't sound like Solid State Amplifier Head B. In a tube head, however, every little component change in the head can change the sound of the amp. Even two models of the same amp will come out of the same factory, same settings, and will still sound different. Most of that has to do with how volatile tubes are and how often they change within themselves. Thus changing a tube will most often lead to a new sound. So, if you're looking to change the sound of your amp, try different tubes. But you may never be able to get the "original" sound the amp used to have.