What review magazine do you work for?
I ask because you seem to work for a magazine that can supply you with all these items at the same time. It's impressive.
Manufacturers and dealers do not give reviewers items for limitless periods (well except TAS maybe who tend to get long-term loans/free gear fo years replaced by the new model). WE tubes are something like $4,500US a pair and if he doesn't roll the WE 300B valve - someone like you will complain that he didn't use Western Electric tubes which then nullifies everything he has to say as it is the presumptive pick as the best 300B tube. Someone else will whine that he didn't roll Takatsuki valves - perhaps the pick as the other best 300B tube.
That's a difficult ask from someone who doesn't own a SET amplifier or indeed, an SET owner of 2a3 or 211.
I also think a reviewer should review the stock product - if it comes with PSVANE you review it with PSVANE. Every tube amp owner knows they will get a marked improvement/or at least a different sound with better/different valves.
Thinking it over I do mostly agree with your points. For example, I would not spend time on comparisons to SS amplifiers - I think the reviewer should try their best to pay attention to who the readership for the product will likely be. Thus, you're right in that anyone reading a review of $100K+ SET amplifiers from Kondo has already decided that SS is not for them. That is a huge chunk of money and you are very likely reviewing for an established SET audience who isn't using lower-efficiency speakers from Harbeth. The matching is certainly odd from both a sound perspective as Alan Shaw (Harbeth's owner/designer) believes all properly working amplifiers all sound the same and secondly that more power is always better! Thus using any SET at any price runs antithetical to Alan's beliefs about the best audio reproduction. In other words, Kondo would be like forcing a square peg down a round hole.
Correct me if I am wrong, but reading your views again what you are saying is that a reviewer choosing to cover these Kondo amps should already own SET amplifiers and have SET amplifiers (or at least top-quality PP Tube amplifiers) to make comparisons with more "ideally" matched speakers. If so then I agree.
I read the review sort of from a lower price tier perspective. The gear I typically review is far more modestly priced and my audience tends to be "new to SET" or "new to tubes" so the target audience wants to know how a SET will compare to a SS amplifier - the strengths/weaknesses the aesthetics and the ergonomics etc.
I remember an old review of my OTO Phono SE where the reviewer was running the amp on his big floorstanding Thiel speakers which I believe hit in the 2-3 ohm range. The OTO was measured in Hi-Fi Choice magazine as 10 watts per channel but 4.2 watts (undistorted). The El84 is hardly a powerhouse. The reviewer loved the amp and all but it certainly was a poor match. Neither manufacturer would recommend such a pairing. Hi-Fi Choice noted that the OTO won their blind level-matched auditions with a panel of reviewers all choosing it over all the other amps in their test. But at 4.2 watts per channel, they called it "idiosyncratic." At the OTO's price level, you have to bring up far more caveats because now you're selling to a far greater audience - many of whom are buying gear to listen to music and are not likely as well versed on tube technobabble.
