I guess I'm a tube newbie although I have built many many kits starting with a Knight-Kit 12W transistor stereo amp in the 60's.
I have mostly stuck with solid state (except for an old Heathkit FM tuner kit and home brew FM stereo demodulator) so I have to re-learn all the tube stuff I thought I would never need again.
Having burned out on solid state amps but still needing a periodic dose of flux fumes, I bought one of those 11MS8 tube amps from S-5 Electronics. I figured not much to lose for the price they were asking. I assembled it stock but was not pleased with it mounted on a piece of wood so I disassembled it, tossed the wood and mounted it in a Lexan case I built. Well it came out so nice tube fever struck me. I searched the internet and ebay for weeks checking out what was available to feed my new habit. I finally decided on Shannon's ST-35 board as a good next project since I didn't want a complete kit (I wanted to make another bigger amp again enclosed in Lexan). I have the RevD board, Uncle Ned's trannys, and enough of the Mouser parts to warrant dragging my trusty American Beauty 33W iron from the cupboard again.
Enough of the preface, now to my question.
I am intrigued with the LM317 cathode bias thing and am not that much of a tube purist to resist using a few solid state goodies. They didn't have those 3 term regulators back when I studied tubes. I noticed the board has the footprint for mounting 3 term TO-220s, so is it as simple as leaving the bias resistors off and mounting a 35.7 ohm, 1%, 1/2 w resistor in the spot where the 10 ohm would have gone?
BTW, I am kicking myself because at work we used to have two Tinius-Olsen test machines which utilized two small 3 tube servo amps each. They used a 6X4,12AX7,and a 6BQ5 each. I had to keep them running so we replaced the tubes on a regular basis working or not. When the machines were finally decommissioned about 15-20 years ago due to age and wear, I tossed all the used and unused tubes I had in stock to make room in the parts locker. I figured I would never need them again and if I did they were not that expensive. So out in the trash went about 6 sets of unused RCA and Sylvania 6X4s,12AX7s, and 6BQ5s. What an idiot. I have scrounged the equipment graveyard at work and found an old Fanon 100W PA amp with the original tubes and a collection of new and used tubes (mostly 12AX7s,12AU7s) with at least a half dozen 6AV5s. I know there were two vintage tube bench power supplies (0-300vdc, 0-150vdc, 6.3 and 12.6vac outputs) at one time. Looks like I'm already scheming the project after. I was thinking something like an SE amp using paralleled 6AV5s since I have so many. Hmmmm...