What's the greatest bargain in SET these days?

This thread gets better and better! Thank you Charles, and everybody for the ongoing discussion of the sonic distinctions between the EL-34 and directly heated triodes.
It's interesting that the Decware site kind of addresses this in its advertising for the amp I've been considering. His EL-34 amps feature what he calls the "Hazen grid mod." My shallow understanding is that this involves placing a capacitor at a certain value between two particular pins on the EL-34 tube. This is supposed to push the sonic performance of that tube to a much higher level. The ad copy says:
"Taking advantage of the unique qualities of the EL34 this amp comes standard with the Hazen Grid Mod. As a result, the transparency and musicality it has sets a new benchmark for EL34 that exceeds directly heated triode amplifiers at twice the price."
I can't comment on the truthfulness of this claim, but it's interesting that he is addressing the perceived performance gap between the EL-34 and directly heated triodes.

Rebbi,
It is not surprising Decware would use DHTs as their reference target. Do they equal or surpass DHTs? That's up to the listener to determine.

Rebbi, to me that is ad copy hype. Mark me down as from Missouri, the show me state. I'd have to hear it to believe it! Not likely to happen. I' m all in on Charles' remarks. The DHT 300B is the "Cat's Meow." The EL34 can have a excellent midrange, but not to the extent of a DHT 300B. It's been written here and other places over and over.

I have owned both amp types amongst other types. I truly regret selling my Golden Tube 300B. When that company went out of business I was worried about ongoing support. Now, knowing what I know, with the advent of Shuguang Black Treasure 300B, I should have implemented Arthur Salvatore's (someone to listen too) mods to the Golden Tube 300B for true world class sound at that time. Now, he and his associates believe Charles' and Brownsfan Coincident 300B amp to be the finest sounding overall.

"I truly regret selling my Golden Tube 300B."

Funny you mention THAT amp Mikirob. After all the discussion on this thread I started looking around for a 300B DHT amp just to see how it might fare with the Decapos. There was a Golden tube 300b amp for sale recently on Agon. When I decided to buy it, it was gone, one day, snooze and lose! I had the same thing in mind, upgrading some of the parts to see what could be gotten. For 1K no risk and probably a lot of fun as well.

A lot of DIY'er's have performed the Hazen Grid mod on their non Decware amps and this usually skeptical crowd seems to appreciate it as a viable mod as many seem to claim that it does in fact make an improvement. If you do some Google searches on the subject, you'll see lots of discussions.

Now that said, even if it does improve the EL34 triode sound, I would still go after a well built 300B if it was in my budget.