WILL YOU FINALLY STOP GIVING 'ADVICE' WITHOUT LOOKING UP FACTS!!!!
Powering up a VFET amplifier with a 'dim bulb' setup WILL, I repeat WILL BLOW UP THE VFETs.
And when they do, I sincerely recommend that the author of the question bill you for the 8 that will die, which, IF you are lucky, will cost you $50 a piece.
Now for the real advice:
It IS possible to power up the amplifier without the VFETs fitted and check out the VFETs as well as the relevant voltages to know if it will work. It is NOT trivial (needs some clever mechanical tricks as the VFET screws also hold the power amp PCB), but it can pass enough signal to drive a set of headphones with which the basic functionality can be checked.
There have been many threads here and also over at audiokarma.org, regarding all the Sony VFETs...