LinLai WE 300B or the LinLai Global Elite Permaloy 300B tubes ?


I presently am using Sophia Electric 300B mesh-plates and find them to sound good in general.  I originally used the Sophia Royal Princess 300B's and really loved the sound, however in my experience, reliability was really poor and for the price, it wasn't any fun trying to get replacements.  I'm getting ready to order new 300B's however would like to know if any of you have had experience with their WE 300B or their flagship Elite Permaloy 300B.
Thanks... John
128x128Ag insider logo xs@2xliquidsound
@liquidsound  Great to hear you have them in your system. Looking forward to your impressions and results. I was referring to the US WE-300B replicas (not the Linlai replicas).

@twoleftears  Thanks for sharing the information and the link. Very helpful!
@twoleftears,
Thanks for providing the Stereophile link. Interesting commentary from Herb Reichert. He compared the new production western Electric 300b to lower price 300b alternatives. A more insightful and ’even playing field’ comparison would include EAT, EML, Elrog, KR Audio, Linlai Elite series and Takasuki.

The Feliks Audio Arioso seems yet another fine 300b amplifier product from Poland. Along with Ancient Audio and the Closer Acoustics  Provacateur (Thanks @david_ten). Apparently lots of music lovers in Poland 😉.
Charles
If you check the Stereophile website, I think you will find that there are two previous columns by HR where he covers other brands of 300b tubes.
Seems like HR's preference for WE based as much on warranty as sq. I believe the Cossor brand LinLai are Asian market only tubes, certainly not the same as Elite or perhaps even their lower level North America exports.

As for warranties, assuming we need to use, the WE or EML are way to go. Based on sq AND warranty the choice becomes more difficult, if warranty issues never become factor then go with best sq. But then we have to take in account that warranty length likely correlates with tube life, you may have to replace tubes with lesser warranty two, even three times in the five year warranty period of WE tubes. And to make it even more complex, lets say Western Electric tubes don't suffer failure over five year period, but they measure only 70% or some lesser amount of new a year or two down the road, which means we're using a tube not operating at peak for whatever warranty time remaining. I'd like to see tube measurements correlated with operating time, but then different equipment may affect tube life differently. So now I'm really confused!

Above presumes warranties only cover failure of tube, don't cover accelerated wear.