Charles1dad: No disrespect intended. I was only generally commenting on cheaper 300B production. I may in deed enjoy the sound of the Shuguang Treasure Series 300B. I just have a predilection for the original; NOS WE. And I haven't heard any other 300B either. I would have liked to, but once I had those vintage beauties in place there was no reason to disturb the sound. Maybe it was $$$ bias since they cost so much. But the overall system sound was glorious. Now I'm only trying to narrow down my choices and hopefully come away with one that satisfies both my senses and budget.
I'll always be very skeptical when it comes to the cheap vacuum tube versions, or when manufacturers insist you use theirs, compared to NOS.
I won't be buying the KR WE Clone because of the reliability/warranty issues, even though it technically should be a perfect match for my SET monos and thus warrantied. That's unfortunate, although their position of denying warranty to some customers is understandable. It's designed to certain specs (matched to their amps) and other amp designs may not be compatible, hence the premature failure. Tube makers don't like to mention this fact because they want you to use their tubes, but you need to check specs before rolling ahead, especially with NOS, and making sure it is a proper variant. I haven't run into any issues so far but I've had a few NOS and current production tubes fail before their time. Not bad though when compared to how many tubes I've had and hrs used.
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