Hi All,
Dig around long enough and the answers come. I found a nice little link for those interested... And maybe a link that will save on those tubes of yours at the same time, whether they be Tubes in a KLV or an Ameritron or whatever else you may have.
Here's the link: Amp Tube Tune Up
Although many amps do not have the meters of the more expensive amps... Everyone can benefit as long as they have some type of watt meter.
At the bottom you will see that it says after Maximum tune-up on AM take your load control and "Over Load" your amp... This will drop the dead key, you want to drop it 10% or so... Down at the bottom I give an example of my linears.
Make sure when you advance that Load control that you advance it in the direction that the Coupler "Un Meshes" itself... The easiest thing to do is take off your case and look.
This drops the Grid Current 30% to 50%... Thus promoting a much longer life expectancy of tubes! And along with it comes the swing that produces that great Audio punch!!
Example of the KLV 1000:
Texas Ranger Base Station= 1.5 Watt DeadKey/14 Watt Swing
150 Watts DeadKey= 692 Watts Swing (On Low)
550 Watts DeadKey=1525 Watts Swing (On High)
This is with a Bird Watt Meter and Svetlana Russian EL-509's
Since running like this the Case directly beneath the power supply has run much, much cooler... It's hard to give a number like that... But I'd say 40% Cooler than previous.
Also... Tuning the KLV the way the manual reccomends only produces, get this...
175 Watt DeadKey=550 Watts Swing
Same Tubes... Same Power Setting... Just not "Over Loading" the load control... Yet it's harder on the tubes...
This may be part of the reason for the dreaded tube failure experienced in the KLV ... I will know more later on as I use these linears and see for myself how these tubes hold up.
And to be quite honest... Now that I can swing so much on Low I may not use High power... I mean the audio punch is nothing short of phenomenal on this Amp!!
I wish I would have run into this a long, long time ago... But like anything else, live and learn.
Don't take my word for it... Try it yourself and see what happens.
Dig around long enough and the answers come. I found a nice little link for those interested... And maybe a link that will save on those tubes of yours at the same time, whether they be Tubes in a KLV or an Ameritron or whatever else you may have.
Here's the link: Amp Tube Tune Up
Although many amps do not have the meters of the more expensive amps... Everyone can benefit as long as they have some type of watt meter.
At the bottom you will see that it says after Maximum tune-up on AM take your load control and "Over Load" your amp... This will drop the dead key, you want to drop it 10% or so... Down at the bottom I give an example of my linears.
Make sure when you advance that Load control that you advance it in the direction that the Coupler "Un Meshes" itself... The easiest thing to do is take off your case and look.
This drops the Grid Current 30% to 50%... Thus promoting a much longer life expectancy of tubes! And along with it comes the swing that produces that great Audio punch!!
Example of the KLV 1000:
Texas Ranger Base Station= 1.5 Watt DeadKey/14 Watt Swing
150 Watts DeadKey= 692 Watts Swing (On Low)
550 Watts DeadKey=1525 Watts Swing (On High)
This is with a Bird Watt Meter and Svetlana Russian EL-509's
Since running like this the Case directly beneath the power supply has run much, much cooler... It's hard to give a number like that... But I'd say 40% Cooler than previous.
Also... Tuning the KLV the way the manual reccomends only produces, get this...
175 Watt DeadKey=550 Watts Swing
Same Tubes... Same Power Setting... Just not "Over Loading" the load control... Yet it's harder on the tubes...
This may be part of the reason for the dreaded tube failure experienced in the KLV ... I will know more later on as I use these linears and see for myself how these tubes hold up.
And to be quite honest... Now that I can swing so much on Low I may not use High power... I mean the audio punch is nothing short of phenomenal on this Amp!!
I wish I would have run into this a long, long time ago... But like anything else, live and learn.
Don't take my word for it... Try it yourself and see what happens.
...runna pile-up on 6m SSB