Questions on KT150 tubes

If anyone is interested I may sell my matched quad of 120's from Kevin Deal. At the most they probably have no more than 40-50 hrs. 

I don't recall breaking in the 150s for any particular time period since I replaced a set of 120s that were on their last legs…thus an instant improvement. Also, I can only assume that since all amp designs are somewhat different, so are the way they utilize the tone potential of various tube types…I bought my 150s for under 300 bucks a set (matched, dusted off, weighed, counseled, told to not be afraid of crazy Americans, allowed to say goodbye to tubes who were still in that lonely Russian factory) and if ARC supplies some brand specific mojo I'm not surprised they'd charge you more for these things…another reason to buy a Jolida!

Not just ARC Wolf, all manufacturers' charge more for tubes. Sure don't know why this is so other than their parameters may be tighter and more rejects? In any case the difference between 100.00 a tube and say 150.00 from the manufacturer sure doesn't seem to warrant paying the difference as long as they are close. Is 300.00 a set for a quad, 2 per channel? I typically see for about 100.00 each from tube vendors.

From what I understand, ARC and Conrad Johnson charge more for their tubes because they test them more thoroughly. I also heard that they, especially for CJ, test in the actual amps that these tubes will be installed.

I believe they go through more trouble to weed out tubes that would normally die an early death.

Also, I believe ARC in particular, tests for parameters that keeps the tolerance tighter for their circuits because of the Primary and slave bias aspects of their circuits which require matched pairs.

In my CJ gear, tubes are individually biased, which can help alleviate some of the stricter matching required by ARC.

$269 a year ago for a "matched" (at the factory? A tube dating site?) quad of 150s from a very highly rated Ebay seller. Long live the hot pickle!…just crazy good sounding tubes.