About the meter craze, I am not a particular fan of meters although my linestage has a meter. It is actually useful for telling me when the linestage is stable and can be switched to fully on. But, the real reason it is there is because the builder uses only certain very old chassis for his projects and the chassis would have a big round hole if a meter is not stuck in there.
At the last Capital Audiofest, I went around with two young guys who are both fully engaged in gear, including professionally repairing and reconditioning gear (one is 26 years old the other 17). As a joke, we went on the hunt for the biggest and most impressive meters. In the Western Electric room, we found monoblocs that use massive quantities of 300b tubes (of course! they manufacture and sell those tubes) and had a square meter on the front of each monobloc that had to be at least 8" by 8". Winner! Winner!.
