Did Stereophile really say the tube will "always" cause the resistor failure? I don't see the automatic connection. You may not be lucky; more that Stereophile was unlucky.
tube/resistor failure
I was just reading the Stereophile test of the Audio Research VS110 and they had an output tube arc/fail which also resulted in a burned out resistor. I have had output tubes fail in my amps (VAC and Cary) without any resistor damage. Have I just been lucky or is there something unique to the Audio Research designs that automatically results in resistor damage if a tube fails?