Mounting tubes horizontally

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rich

Well-known member
Joined
Dec 10, 2004
Messages
84
I'm gettin ready to build a tube preamp with 12ax7, 12au7 and 12bh7, the bh7 is pretty high (smokes a lot of marijuana) so I'm considering mounting the tubes horizontally. Will this affect the performance of the preamp?
 
From RDH4:

"(1) Unless otherwise stated, it is desirable that valves should be mounted base down and in a vertical position. When it is necessary to depart from vertical mounting, the plane of the filament of directly heated valves should be vertical. Simiraly, the plane of the grid side rods (or major axis of the control gris) of indirectly heated valves having a high transconductance and/or a long unsupported supported cathode, should be vertical. This reduces the possibility of filament - and cathode-to-grid short circuits and microphony in filament valves."

In real life, do we care?

No.

Never had any problems. Maybe a guitar amp that vibrates a lot might cause problems. Tubes are cheap. In a 1 RU rack you have to mount the tubes horizontally. If your like Kevin C who confessed to me at the AES show that he owns 2500 vacuum tubes, do you think he worries? Bastard! :razz:
 

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