Western Electric 300B problem

I've had the newer WE 300B tubes for a couple of years now and they work and sound amazing; no problems at all, and would buy again in a heartbeat. The warranty on these tubes is 5 years, provided you sent in the warranty card when you got the tubes. 

@jayctoy I purchased these through Upscale.

In ruminating on this overnight I've pretty much decided to forego another attempt with these tubes for the following reasons.

1. On considering odd smell on startup this may have been burning insulation, perhaps a transformer, perhaps a resistor, who knows. Whatever, the sense it was heat related smell can't be good. Until I fire back up with Acme's in place this all speculation. In any case the fear of amp failures due to bad power tubes is well founded in my case as I'll explain below.

2. These WE 300B's are absolutely the noisiest tubes with inrush current I've ever heard, and this with many 845, EL34, KT family, 6550, any and all signal tubes. I understand that metal expands with heat but this level of noise is unprecedented in my case.

3. Don't like how WE handles 5 year warranty. Non-transferable. Worse is the ten day limitation on submitting warranty card registration for the warranty. So it takes four days shipping for tubes to reach me which leaves six days to get registration to Georgia.

4. I've been using 300B tubes for aprox. ten years, in all that time I've closely watched for reviews and personal experiences with all the premium 300B's. The three brands I've most often seen reliability issues with are the WE's, Takatsuki and earlier iteration of Elrog. The only Acme failures I've seen were with a limited run of Line Magnetic amps. Now, I understand anecdotal evidence doesn't tell us about failure rates but still its concerning. I also understand some equipment run tubes hard, excessive plate voltage could be responsible for tube failures.

5. Following experience has greatly affected me, first time I've spoken of this in any forum. Around a decade ago a bad 845 output tube took out my amp. This resulted in a nearly three year nightmare, amp suddenly disappears at authorized tech for nearly two years, this after payment of nearly $3k for repairs. Amp finally appears on my doorstep over two years later in what is supposedly good working order. I open the box and to my horror appears a completely demolished amp, thick stainless steel casework just completely knackered. Of course amp has completely same issues as prior and now I have totally destroyed casework. Over the course of these years I had constantly and consistently tried to contact authorized repair facility, I also contacted local (to tech) police and lawyers. Every avenue to make things whole was going to be big hassle. And then the physical damage, how does a totally demolished amp arrive in a perfectly good box, and packed like crap. Shipper denies responsibility as does tech. The blame game goes around and around. In the end I completely lose full retail value $18k amp, around $3k shipping and repair bill, cost of replacement amp. Thank you WE for bringing back bad memories I'd rather forget.

@carlsbad2 I purchased Acme's through Woo Audio. Based on my research can't recall a single failure with either of the EML. The XLS version is likely the only 300B able to survive some of the high voltages some of these amps are running. 

@testpilot You are correct, the reason I watch very closely at startups with new tubes, especially power tubes, you can take out the entire amp as I can well testify to! Hopefully this will turn out to be for the best as the instant I saw tube go entirely blue and a single pop amp was shut down.

I use Takatsuki 300B. Probably the best sounding. Highly recommended. I’ve used mine for a few hundred hours.

SNS did upscale help you to get a brand new tube?

I have contacted Upscale, immediate response on a Sunday! Explained the symptoms and sent a photo of tube, Jordan supposed to get back with me tomorrow. WE states returns should go through dealer if purchased at a dealer, returns direct to them for direct sales.

My take on 300B premium tubes based on reviews and individuals experiences is that all have very nice sound quality, all seem satisfactory for users. Reliability is the sole issue I see with them. Question is whether this  equipment or tube design issue?