Sorry didn’t see this before. Are you saying they aren’t honoring the warranty for you? Can you give details?
Sadly that is the case, they are not honouring their warranty for me!
I purchased the WE 300b new and had run them for around 100 hrs in my MasterSound Compact 300b. They performed very well and were a definite upgrade on tubes like the Gold Lion. As I was planning to purchase a Shindo Cortese I took the Western Electrics out to save them for that amp.
At that point I reinstalled and rebiased my Gold Lions in the MasterSound and set the WE 30Ob aside. A few weeks later one of the Gold Lions failed and apparently took out a fuse in the MasterSound as it would not play. I took the amp to a local Red Seal technician. He replaced the fuse and checked over the amp and his feeling was that the amp was fine and the Gold Lion tube was the issue. Just to make sure I asked him to play the Mastersound in his shop for a week before I took it back. He did so and as everything was working fine I had him put the WE 300b back in the MasterSound.
A friend had been wanting to listen to the MasterSound in his system. As the amp is heavy rather than move it twice I took it from the tech and installed it in my friend's system. We had been listening for about half an hour when I noticed one of the WE tubes turning a very bright blue, sensing this was not right I rushed over and shut off everything. The WE always had a nice bluish tinge to them but in this case it was quite spectacular.
Any way back to the tech. There was no fuse issue this time and the tech diagnosed the problem as tube failure. While only one turned that spectacular blue testing showed that both tubes were unusable. Yet another set of tubes was installed and I had the tech run the amp for a week before I would take it back. I reinstalled it in my system and ran the MasterSound for a better part of a month with no issues. As the Shindo Cortese had arrived I am now listening to it.
Feeling that I would be able to have the WE300b replaced under warranty the Canadian distributor was contacted and I explained all of what had happened just as above. I was asked to return them to them, which I did. Eventually the distributor got back to me and said that WE would not be honouring the warranty as it was the amp's fault! Apparently the distributor must have felt bad because I was offered a set at their cost. Even at cost these are premium tubes and expensive, no thanks.
So I am not a technician. Given the way things happened I can understand why the amp might be suspect, it could have been the problem. I don't know how WE would test a failed tube and be able to identify the cause of failure, perhaps they can. Perhaps my tech missed something in assessing the amp? It seems to be working just fine now!
All I know is that Western Electric did not honour a warranty that was for me a key in my original purchase!