ARC Select Worth Price?

I’ve bought several sets of 6H30 from Upscale over the years. Both Sovtek and EH Gold labels (both good, extremely similar sound). Upscale’s "Platinum" grade has always been fantastic. Never had a bad one. Never tried Gold grade. I’ve tried both the ARC Select and Cryo premiums - couldn’t tell a difference with either of those. Tubes were going into ARC Ref 6 and Rogue Hera II preamps. And briefly, a Ref 3SE phono. The Ref 6 is very well engineered, and will not have any audible noise floor even on high efficiency speakers, given any decent set of tubes. The noise heard on Ref 3SE (with very low output cartidges, and volume up high) is from its JFET stage. The Rogue Hera II has an inherently high noise floor, but even here I didn’t notice any improvement from premium selectred tubes (I tried).

If a tube goes bad, of course it can go noisy. But for a good set of new tubes, I just go for Upscale Platinum grade all day.

Never tried the vaunted DR version. Hard to find, and expensive especially in these quantities!

I did get a response from Upscale. He said to buy ARC select only if you have Audio Research Equipment and that these tubes are selected to pass higher standards so to hold up better in ARC equipment. To that effect. 

I wonder what ARC would say about the guys dropping 6N6 tubes in place of 6N30 (6H30) for Reference series preamps, to get a different sound :o 

I’ve also heard of folks rolling in different types than 6550 for the regulator tubes. I’ve heard EH KT90 is actually the best, but you have to run lid-off due to its height. I’ve personally used Gold Lion KT88 (Russian) and it worked great. 

AR factory wants 12K for a tube set. 48 tubes

Yikes! $250 per Russian tube. That’s a nice racket. Frankly, traditional tube circuits tend to be very forgiving, and I have to question the engineering that makes a requirement of extremely stringent tube matching. Also, it sort of blows my mind that Upscale's most premium tube option is relatively the "budget" choice.