Yes, the blue halo seems to be unique to the Valve Arts. I sometimes like to fall asleep to low level classical on very quiet nights, like during snowfalls. It used to be really cool to wake up to those blue glows at the end of long passages.

I switched to Sophia meshplates (2.5V 300B's), but I hear Sophia stopped making them. I've also heard that most Asian meshplates are manufactured in the same factory.

From what I understand, the Valf-arts are very inexpensive tubes. The Sophia's were close to $300 a pair (yes, an impulse buy during a moment of weakness). What is surprising is that they seem to work really well in some systems.

I use them after I mod my amps, just in case something leads to a blown tube. That actually happened last time and I blew one of the VA's. After switching the system off and on repeatedly too many times, one of the rectifier tubes (a Mullard no less) on my McIntosh tuner blew and overloaded the amp. POP!

Regards,

Len