Since we are all sharing tales of woe, let me add to our collective commiseration with my own experiences. I have had numerous failures with high end equipment for 40 years. In the beginning, it was largely the CD transports that used to fail (dCS, Mark Levinson, etc.), since I ran solid state gear. As I got more into tubes, I had no issues initially for a few years with ARC, but recently as I got into SETs and other tube manufacturers, the problems have mounted, especially since you tend to use NOS tubes. With my Lampizator Pacific, I had a series of tube failures, and finally found some reliable tubes that I am sticking with, and not tube rolling as much. My Quicksilver 8417 failed multiple times, but Mike Sanders is great guy who lives just 100 miles from my house, and was able to fix them. They are working fine now for the past couple of years, although given the age of the amps, they have developed a bit of transformer hum that Mike says is unavoidable with older amplifiers. My JJ 322 SET that uses a parallel pair of 300Bs blew up a few months ago when driving my Quads, and had to shipped off to George Meyer AV in LA. They fixed it, and it now sounds splendid.
All of this has made me look for cool running solid state gear that's light and reliable. I was thrilled to have purchased the Mola Mola Makua all in one preamp and Kaluga class D mono blocks. They have been bullet proof for the past 2 years, and my go to electronics in the hot summer months (particular this year the Bay Area had many 100 degree days). I am not getting younger, so the days of my schlepping 200 pound tube amplifiers is going to come to an end pretty soon. I'm guessing my Mola Mola's will be my long-term reference going forwards.
I have several SETs that so far have worked reliably. One is a Cary 300B SE, which looks really well built, and I use it with my Klipsch La Scala. The other is a 421a SET built by Oliver Sayes. The 421a is a Western Electric power tube that can drive both channels up to 3 watts. I get a kick of out running the massive La Scalas with one power tube for both channels. Doesn't get simpler than that. The WE 421a is the sleeper tube of the century. It sounds better to my ears than the WE 300B, and the prices are still reasonable. Finally, I have a Triode Labs 45 mono block, and although that company has gone belly up, the amplifier seems well built. All of these (except for Cary) look like 1-man garage built pieces, so don't expect ARC quality with this type of gear. The prices are all much lower than what you pay for with ARC.
I am intrigued by Atmasphere not blowing up a resistor when a tube goes. Sadly, my ARC gear does blow up the sacrificial 1 ohm resistor when a tube goes (and the newer KT150 tubes seem to blow up more often than the previous tubes). The most recent ARC gear blows up a fuse instead of a resistor. It seems that a tube amplifier that blows up a tube should continue to work if it uses a large number of tubes in the output stage. Not sure why ARC can't design such an amp.
