I always thought you could get 8K hours out of driver tubes and 2K for outputs an add recently reversed this.I always assumed that given the cost of outputs versus drivers one was better off buying new Russian outputs and NOS drivers.Did I have this wrong all along?Don't want to hijack string and hope it helps with choice of tubes.I had a great Mesa Baron that put out 12/90/60 watts with three banks of four tubes but it used 6L6 (Mesa is after all a guitar amp company).I got rid of it because I knew that guitar players wanted 6L6 which were plentiful at one pint but musicians needs drove them up.Mesa did Ti tube mod where you could use cheap 6550,El34 for midrange magic and expensive KT88's for bass and dynamics.If I went with mod I might have tried to put together NOS 6550's but all seemed really expensive given number of tubes some amps like Rogue used for 120 watts.But that "on the fly" switch was great tailoring pentode/triode combination in thirds not only for speaker matching but even types of music.Wish more tube amps had it.
G'luck
Chazz
G'luck
Chazz