I have a gig coming up and to get my amp to the gig it will be travelling on the floor of a van for about 30 minutes. Im wondering if anyone has suggestions for transporting valves.
I cant imagine this will do the valves any favours and after spending a lot of money on replacement valves was thinking of taking them out to transport them and setting them back up when i arrived.

Is this an over the top reaction?

Buckethead wrote:I have a gig coming up and to get my amp to the gig it will be travelling on the floor of a van for about 30 minutes. Im wondering if anyone has suggestions for transporting valves.
I cant imagine this will do the valves any favours and after spending a lot of money on replacement valves was thinking of taking them out to transport them and setting them back up when i arrived.

Is this an over the top reaction?

Hey, if it's easy enough to do, if it only takes you a couple minutes to get them out and a couple minutes to put them in, why not? It's probably not necessary at all, but I don't see what it could hurt.

The only thing I would suggest is, make sure you put the valves back into the exact same sockets they came out of. Switching the preamp valves from one socket to another, even if they are all 12AX7's, can noticeably change your tone. Imbalances between the two halves of each tube, and the different sonic characteristics of the tubes themselves, could result in changes to your tone, slight or otherwise, that you may not want.

And the output tubes should go in the same sockets they came out of. I just spent about two hours the other night making sure that the four output valves in one of my Laney VC30's were in their optimal positions, so the two halves of the output transformer were seeing as close to the same power as possible. If you only have two output tubes in your amp, that's less of an issue and all... but is still noteworthy. If you have four output valves, it's more noteworthy.

I bought a matched octet (8 valves) of EL84's, and spent about two hours finding the best four and specific order for them that ended up with the power on each half of the output transformer as close as possible. Ended up within about half a watt, which I'm really happy with. If I pulled them out and put them back in randomly, I could potentially end up in a situation where the power wasn't as balanced as I'd like it to be.

Long story long, it's probably not necessary to do it, but there's also no reason not to, if you don't mind spending a couple minutes doing it, and if you make sure to get them in the same order so you're not messing with the tone or balance of your amp.

I wouldn't bother, but if it is an easy thing to take them out, wrap them in tissue paper and stick them in a box.

Preamp valves aren't worth it - they hardly ever blow due to shorts / loose elements.

You'd need to mark each power valve so that they returned to their original position for bias reasons.

I believe it is more risky to transport them when they are still hot from use, but I'm not actually sure.

scott wrote:I bought a matched octet (8 valves) of EL84's, and spent about two hours finding the best four and specific order for them that ended up with the power on each half of the output transformer as close as possible. Ended up within about half a watt, which I'm really happy with. If I pulled them out and put them back in randomly, I could potentially end up in a situation where the power wasn't as balanced as I'd like it to be.

You are a nazi. I hope you at least found some other use for the 4 extra tubes which happen to be matched.

Tubes are really not so precious that they should be removed. They are more likely to be broken though handling. If your tubes are so valuable switch them for cheaper ones for shows and rehearsals. Leave them in the amp.

Spending money on new tubes and strings are kind of the cost of doing business. Since amps were designed to be moved tubes in and tubes were designed to be used in military hardware and are pretty damage resistant you seem to be too focused on the tubes. Would you take your strings off between playings and soak them in rust resistant fluid and restring?

Well, they were *SOLD* to me as 8 matched tubes. But when I just took the first four and dropped them in the amp, they were drawing crazy currents. Like, V4 was drawing 35ma and V8 was drawing 44ma (which I think might actually be outside the safe operating range of an EL84 at the ~280V plate that this amp runs).

So yeah, just dropping the first four tubes into whatever sockets would've resulted in a pretty awful situation, with at least one of the tubes maybe getting fried. Way to go, not-actually-matched tubes!! That's what I get for not going to Triode...

Big John wrote:Tubes are really not so precious that they should be removed. They are more likely to be broken though handling.

true

however, putting an old tube amp on the floor of a van for a bumpy van ride, repeatedly, is a good way to shake loose solder joints and end up with intermittent and irritating amp problems

i suggest spending the money on a flight case if you end up traveling any more than occasionally

Flight case is a good idea, and they make a good looking stand to put the amp on rather than a folding chair.

I have moved amps by rolling them through the streets of New York - a couple of miles. On foot using the amps casters or using a handtruck. Never had any tube problems.

scott wrote:Well, they were *SOLD* to me as 8 matched tubes. But when I just took the first four and dropped them in the amp, they were drawing crazy currents. Like, V4 was drawing 35ma and V8 was drawing 44ma (which I think might actually be outside the safe operating range of an EL84 at the ~280V plate that this amp runs).

So yeah, just dropping the first four tubes into whatever sockets would've resulted in a pretty awful situation, with at least one of the tubes maybe getting fried. Way to go, not-actually-matched tubes!! That's what I get for not going to Triode...

You're right. I assumed that if they are sold as matched then they should run usually within 5mA of each tube. But if you bought a smaller amount, I'm sure the guy would have spent more time finding closer pairs.

tmidgett wrote:

Big John wrote:Tubes are really not so precious that they should be removed. They are more likely to be broken though handling.

true

Really? Broken through handling? Do you mean the tube sockets would be broken from the tubes being put in and out, or you mean that the tube itself is more likely to be broken because it was touched/inserted/removed than it would be from something like a van hitting an unexpected pothole? A pin breaking off? I'm curious how the tube would actually be broken.

Now I'm wondering if anybody's ever had a tube actually get broken by a physical factor like hitting a pothole or the amp being dropped on the way in or out of a club. New poll, here