PreSonus Forums

Hey everyone,

So I bought a firestudio tube a while ago (used) and I always leave the unit on in my studio because my computer is temperamental to external hardware power cycling. So I was reading that leaving a tube unit on all the time is bad for the tube life. My question is, when that time comes, how will I know that the tube has gone bad and what tube should I get? I vaguely remember reading that it is one tube with 2 filaments... true? false? Has anyone modded the tubes?

Thank you all in advance!

If the tube is blown you'll have no sound. With age it will get weaker and you'll begin to notice some degradation in sound. But, for the most part with the majority of "tube" preamps the tube warmth is an illusion at best, since they're not really tube amplifiers. Instead the tube is a starved plate design and the tube is driven with a fraction of the voltage needed to really run a tube properly. And, as a result, such tubes rarely wear out. I'm not entirely sure this is the with the Firestudio Tube but is indeed the case with the BlueTube & TubePre. I would say that it's very unlikely that you're tube(s) need replacing. You may notice some small improvement if you replace them with higher quality tube(s). You're unit likely has one or two 12AX7's and they are likely either Russian or Chinese. Replacing them with higher quality tubes like Mullards, Amperex, GE, JJ etc....may give you a slightly noticeable improvement in sound quality.