Well... i use Rod Coleman regs which are current limited, so yes softstart...
Out of 10, 4 died, but currently I got a quad which is now without trouble since approx. 9 months. All came from the same delivery. So, I would guess izs a production tolerance issue to be honest. You can be lucky or not.
Svetlana vs Winged C:
A group of us purchased our Svetlana 300B tubes years before any Winged C tubes came out.
JJ early, late, and late re-tested:
On a similar note, I used to hear about JJ tubes that died (maybe early ones did).
However, this is the new and better experience that I had:
I purchase all my JJ tubes from eurotubes.com in the US.
I just drive over and pick them up (but they sell on the web to US and some overseas).
Eurotubes re-tests all the JJ tubes after they arrive from Slovakia.
I know what testers they use, the kinds of tests they do, and I even worked with the designer of some of their test fixtures.
I have purchased from eurotubes.com . . . several types of JJ preamp and small signal tubes, and several types of JJ power output tubes. All of them are working really well.
A group of us purchased our Svetlana 300B tubes years before any Winged C tubes came out.
JJ early, late, and late re-tested:
On a similar note, I used to hear about JJ tubes that died (maybe early ones did).
However, this is the new and better experience that I had:
I purchase all my JJ tubes from eurotubes.com in the US.
I just drive over and pick them up (but they sell on the web to US and some overseas).
Eurotubes re-tests all the JJ tubes after they arrive from Slovakia.
I know what testers they use, the kinds of tests they do, and I even worked with the designer of some of their test fixtures.
I have purchased from eurotubes.com . . . several types of JJ preamp and small signal tubes, and several types of JJ power output tubes. All of them are working really well.