You have to understand that since Welborne Labs sells direct, we don't have the dealer markup and other costs (advertising, numerous review samples, etc.) associated with supporting a brick and mortar product. So take a brick an mortar product and reduce its price by 60%. Then and only then can you compare our product to their's apples-to-apples. Of course that is assuming you can move beyond the paradigms - "kits are cheap" "kits don't sound as good" or "less engineering effort is put into kits", etc. all which is completely hogwash.
Yes, our DRD45s use hum pots and you will no doubt need to adjust the hum pot everytime you change tubes.
Blackgates? - well that is the advantage of the DRD design. Unlike most other SET designs, with the Direct Reactance topology, the power supply is not in the signal path and therefore one doesn't need to insert $500 worth of Blackgates into the power supply to make the amps sound better. Another paradigm that is hard for some people move beyond. I'd put that $500 to better use elsewhere in my system.
Ron
