EL34 recommendations/biasing

[Anonymous]

Bottom line, I think high-end builders like Matchless, Friedman, etc use JJs for a reason.

Reason: cheap, reliable and widely available

Yeah, they don't have a reputation to uphold based on tone. While all of those things you point out are true, they wouldn't use them if they didn't feel the tone was there as well. When you're selling a low-volume, high-end product to a limited clientele, you don't sacrifice performance because something happens to be cheap and reliable.

I agree, but all tubes sound good, there's not one that truly sounds horrible. Hence why I mentioned those 3 criterias. Once a tube meets these criterias, they'll probably go with the one that sounds better.
I read on the Diezel forums (from the boss) that JJ E34Ls had a really high fail ratio.

Sorry, we never used JJ EL34´s. That´s a misunderstanding.
Most EL34 types are not easy to handle because of the control
grid to screen grid construction. The EL34 is the most "musical"
power tube but very sensitive.

I wrote E34L, not EL34

According to this thread, it was your tube of choice
viewtopic.php?f=14&t=38607&hilit=+e34l

Then according to those threads, you said they caused problems
viewtopic.php?f=14&t=60592&p=693569&hilit=+e34l#p693569
viewtopic.php?f=14&t=102908
viewtopic.php?f=14&t=40858&p=478140&hilit=+e34l#p478140

Sorry if I misunderstood any of your statements

To say sorry is on my side. It´s time to buy glasses

Honor just to interact with you, I really love your work