[Amish]

I recently picked one of these up for my Ember amp and I noticed that my tube gets much hotter now compared to not using the Novib. Without the Novib the tube gets warm at most but with Novib it actually gets hot. I can hold the tube without being in pain but its quite a jump up in temp. If I know anything it's that heat kills life. So is this something I should be worried about?

 

[tomb]

  I recently picked one of these up for my Ember amp and I noticed that my tube gets much hotter now compared to not using the Novib. Without the Novib the tube gets warm at most but with Novib it actually gets hot. I can hold the tube without being in pain but its quite a jump up in temp. If I know anything it's that heat kills life. So is this something I should be worried about?

Just an FYI, but socket savers are really for tube testers - where you may cycle hundreds, if not thousands, of tubes in and out of the same socket.  There really is no justification for using one in an amp, IMHO.  The NOVIB appears to market itself with some vibration-dampening in the socket, so there may be some sound quality improvements if your tubes tend toward microphonics.  However, there are probably better things to do if that's the case - like requesting tube replacements from the vendor that sold them to you.

 
 
I can't do anything but offer conjecture on the increased heat: It may be that raising the level of the tube puts it more inline with the heat flow coming off of the heat sinks (cooling slots in back) in the Ember.  Or it may be that the NOVIB is a much better heat conductor than a "normal" ceramic socket (which is fairly nil) and is picking up much more heat from inside the amp and transmitting it to the tube - by virtue of the squishy, but most likely more "contacting" vibration padding.