How long do amps last??

[walkerboh]

I`ve just been thinking and I`m curious as to how long an average amp lasts? Let`s say your keeping really good care of it, how long do you think it will take before wear and tear takes place?

 

[john_jcb]

Well I have one amp that is over 40 years old. It has been used and abused from the looks of it and with a little tender loving care it works great. A few tubes needed to be swapped out and the switches and sockets required a good cleaning.

I think modern amps will last for an extremely long time many decades. Most failures if they are going to occur will happen during the burn in period. Tubes will last for a long time as well although their lifespan is shorter than SS.

 

[Old Pa]

Bryston amps come with 20 year warranties; barring a bad line surge or other untoward incident, a well made amp should last almost longer than some of us want it to.

Another good reason to spend time on your selection and get the best that you can afford. Socketed components designed for replacement (ie. vacuum tubes) have, of course, life shorter than the rest of the hardware. I think that in the last 35 years, however, I have only replaced one or two vacuum tubes in audio equipment total. Price pointed consumer electronics, however, in my experience last only about twice as long as the interval they are warranteed for, and are generally not worth repairing. They also don't sound much good from the start. Cheap electronics constitute a real cause of buyers' remorse.

 

[agile_one]

With care and a clean environment, a well built amplifier should be expected to give good service for at least 25 years. I have had many vintage amps from the 60's and 70's (both high (McIntosh, Marantz) and mid-fi (Dynaco, Hafler, Pioneer, Sansui, etc) that play as well today as the day they were made.

It's the components with moving parts (Speakers, Tuners, Tape decks, CD Players) that can wear out that will fail much earlier - all are repairable, of course, but not likely to operate trouble free for as long as a preamp or amp will.

As far as I can tell, heat, moisture, dirt, corrosion, and power spikes are the worst enemies, and if they are avoided or managed, your equipment will thrive.

 

[kevin gilmore]

Electrolytic power supply caps have a finite life. Depending
on temperature and a few other items the absolute best
you are going to get is about 25 years. Caps are generally
easy to replace. Volume knobs get noisy with time. Sometimes
you can clean them, other times you can't. Germanium
transistors also wear out due to migration, but this probably
takes 50 years or more. I have a couple of amplifiers from
the early 1950's that with parts replaced still work as good
as they did when they were new.