in hindsight i shouldn't have lifted part of a private discussion i had, even though, i thought it applicable to the discussion at hand and hoped it would clear up some misinformation (tango), but in fact it opened a can of worms. it didn't dawn on me in the slightest that custom, off the shelf or somewhere in between would even be a contentious issue and potentially snowball into a somewhat heated topic. if i did, i wouldn't have touched it with a ten foot pole as i am trying to avoid controversy. i had believed and still do to a certain extent that the info i provided was factual and have no reason not to believe my source. and in the big picture at least for me, the two main things i tend to care most about are sound quality and price to performance ratio.
i pulled this from Todd's description of the 307A...
"All of the transformers are custom wound by hand in the USA by one of the finest audio transformer producers in the world, and were designed specifically for this amplifier."
if it is the case that anyone can order this transformer, i can see how one could find it suspect or even disingenuous. but i certainly can still respect your position as it also makes sense. this whole situation seems a bit like making a mountain out of a molehill to me, but then again i don't think it such a big deal.