The dog was being a little wierder than usual before
our walk. I took her out early just to calm her down. When we got back,
I went downstairs to listen to some music, my amps had been left on to
warm up. This is a standard thing with tube amps, they change (for the
better) if you let them heat up and stabilize before listening. Since I
was anticipating doing some “serious” listening that night, I wanted to
make sure they were good and warm before listening.
Anyway, I came downstairs and heard a very high
pitched whine that made me shudder. It was similar to the whine of a
CRT, but higher and just a little fainter. I’m guessing that it was
around 18KHz, but it could have been as low as 16KHz. I’m not sure if I
can hear as high as 18 anymore, it isn’t uncommon for men my age to be
limited to 15K. On the other hand, I still jump when people turn on TVs
sometimes, and I can tell when Rick is on the computer upstairs by the
whine of the monitor. I have also requested that my dental hygenist not
use the sonic tarter removel thingy on me anymore, I prefer the manual
scraping. People look at me strangely when I complain of the high
pitched noises that they can’t hear, so maybe I can still hear that
high… In any case, continued high pitched noises really bother me. It
goes beyond the sound, it actually hurts, my inner ear rings, my teeth
hurt, and I tense up to the point of being sore. I can appreciate the
dog’s problem, it is throughly unpleasent, and the poor thing is much
more sensitive than me.
This was obviously not going to do for my stereo, so
some testing was in order. Turns out that it was an output tube. Thank
God, the input tubes cost a bundle these days. The output tubes run
somewhere between 6 to 15 bucks apiece whereas the good input tubes
(mil spec 6sl7 tubes if you’re interested) are running 50 to 100 a pop.
I now no longer have any spares of my favorite output tube, looks like
I’ll be ordering some more pretty soon. Oh yeah, the dog was fine after
I turned off the stereo…:-)
Isaac