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Dispatched without factory packaging or owner's manual; with a handwritten "Triode Spirit AC/DC 45" label on the back and tiny AC/DC labels next to the top panel switch of equivalent functionality; with no instructions on what the two knobs in the front were for nor the silver toggle in the back next to the power mains; my initial impressions weren't of 100% enthusiasm for Mr. Ming Su's style of preparing for his first formal review in the US press. But a subsequent e-mail explained that the two frontal controls are attenuators in case the amp is run source-direct. The small silver toggle in the rear is a ground lift and the screws between the 45s aren't bias current trimmers (the amp is self-biasing) but hum pots, to be adjusted by ear depending on what 45 type is run (Full Music, Emission Labs, NOS).
Where the Yamamoto A-08S oozes sheer class in its cosmetic styling, the J.C. Verdier is less concerned with plainly visible screw heads or plastic knobs. This Triode Spirit amp is a more old-fashioned "hammer-finish" affair altogether. Incidentally, the AC/DC-heater adjustment can only be changed during power-off.
The lack of proper silkscreening for the nomenclature or the AC/DC knob in fact signals prototype - or rushed conversion from existing model. I quickly realized that my perhaps uninspected expectations raised by the (admittedly outrageous) Yamamoto had to be tempered. Once I returned to terra firma, second sight pronounced things fine and normal except for those funky paper stickers (I've removed the one on the rear as simply too embarrassing for public viewing).
Rather than remove the customary bottom cover, the Verdier slips off its entire dark-brown pan once four side-mounted screws have been loosened.
Suddenly the tube count on deck with its two pentode-connected 717As, two 5A54 rectifiers, four 184Es and two Sylvania 45s has to increase by one to account for the horizontally mounted Siemens 184E in the substantial power supply. That, my tube-lovin' fellow fiends, is a lot of tubes - more than twice of what's in the Yamamoto and here clearly dual-mono all the way. So much for single-ended simplicity.

My requests for circuit details thus far haven't netted a response from France hence the images will have to suffice until the concluding listening impressions can fill some of the tantalizing holes left at present.