Heart attack, Mattzack2?!? WOW, that's serious in the kind of way we almost never get around here. Terrible news, I'm very sorry. I'm amazed how quickly you've gotten back into the game.
I've been in contact with JJ through the past year, and they maintain the blue and red glass have no influence on sonics. Years ago, a person (not at JJ) told me that to the degree the color (red, blue, clear) effect heat dissipation, sonics will follow. For whatever reason, the red tubes don't get imported by those who bring them in, as the blue was what folks went with in this market.
The Doctor and I participated in a JJ E34L vs JJ KT77 vs JJ KT88 shootout in the Jadis DA60 several years back, and drew some pretty stark conclusions from that. I'm not the fan of the JJ KT77 that most are. I've not heard the Gold Lion KT77, but hear good things about them. In the past year, I've purchased JJ EL34 and big bottle 6CA7 tubes. The EL34 have a more even-handed, fuller, richer sound top to bottom than the E34L, filling in that lower end. But, the E34L maintain that glorious midrange. As I just got the 6CA7 two weeks ago, and have been playing with other things of late, I've not yet tried them.
Doctor, the DA30 and DA60 are autobias (cathode bias) as you mentioned. In other words, the bias gets set by a "fixed" resistor connected to the cathode of the output tube, and cannot be adjusted without changing that resistor. The JOR is fixed bias, which means bias is set through a resistor connected to the control grid of the output tube. The term fixed bias is counter-intuitive, as it most often means that resistor is adjustable (potentiometer). A fixed bias amplifier can also employ a fixed resistor inline with the control grid of the output tube, which would not be adjustable without changing that resistor. Beyond having to manually adjust bias or not, cathode and fixed bias differ in their output power and sonic characteristics.
