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Old 6th Jun 2008, 10:03 pm   #8
paulsherwin
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Default Re: Another (possibly silly) valve question

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ray Cooper View Post
In a small domestic device you don't need to take such radical steps. All that is needed is to increase the device bias until it's just taking a sniff of cathode current - this strips away the space charge, and the effect doesn't occur.
It certainly won't do any harm to do this if you are in any way concerned. I don't think you'd get any detectable deterioration in, say, an unused triode section of an ECF80 though, even after many hours of use. The valves used in big broadcast transmitters are a very different matter and I'll certainly defer to Ray's expertise there.

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