ARC Quality Issues Ref75 Ref5SE Ref10

The 6H30 is rated for 10,000 hours of service.
Mine lasted 5 or 6 months (i.e., outside of warranty window).
I don't know why I purchased from ARC instead of BAT (my Father used to "spread his business around" -I must have been copying him).
I won't stray in the future.
Merry Christmas!

At 2x normal retail, I really don't expect a DOA tube though.

The idea of buying a "vetted" tube at a much higher price is an interesting concept. IMHO, who ever thought of it was a very smart marketing person. The question is....how much validity is there to this approach for the a'phile consumer?
The other question that comes to mind, is how many non-"vetted" tubes can one buy for the same price as the "vetted" tube? Something to maybe ponder, LOL.

@Bifwynne, whilst the points that you make are known to me, however as there have been a sufficient number of instances reported where drift, or critical failure of bias resistors has occurred, and where the clock time on OPT's has past the initial phase where a weak tube may fail early and well within the usable life span of an KT120, For me, to reason, that a slight increase in current handling of the bias resistor, whilst remaining at the same ARC specification Ohmic value, may provide an increased margin of function, without compromising their additional role as a fail safe.

Tsushima1 ... your point is beyond my technical pay grade. Maybe Gary (Hifigeek1), Al (Almarg) or Ralph (Atmasphere) can explain why ARC uses bias resisters that handle only the rated wattage so chosen.

Again, from a non-techie perspective, I surmise that ARC is using low wattage bias resisters as a fuse and wants a quick "blo" to protect the rest of the circuitry if a tube arcs.

If I knew what I was doing with a soldering iron, I would do the repair myself. It's actually quite simple and low tech. Just clip out the burned resister, but leave a little stub sticking out if the board. Then soldier in the new resister to the stub of the old resister. Took the tech about 20 minutes start to finish.

The ARC tech also checked the other passives in the tube pair to make sure they were still in spec --- they were.

Tsushima1 ... this is NOT a big deal. You wanna own a tube amp ... it goes with the territory.

Btw, I understand from older threads that the reason ARC doesn't use circuit breaker type devices in the bias circuit is to limit the number of artifacts. Even still ... hard to believe that a fuse or circuit breaker in the bias circuit would make much of a difference in sound quality. But as I said ... this is above my technical pay grade.