Mine have the soft start feature. Couldn’t be happier with my paramount amps and JJ tubes.......though visiting your site (a dangerous proposition in itself) has me thinking about the new Beepre 2 (might start a new thread on that), as well as the MonAmour 2a3 amps.The really early Paramount amplifiers in the 2A3 configuration had arcing problems with EML tubes (oddly enough you could put a $35 pair of Chinese tubes in there or Sovteks without any problems), so we redesigned that circuit to have different startup behavior which solved that problem entirely. It's actually been a really long time since I've even seen a 2A3 Paramount with the soft start feature added. I do not recall their being any issue with Paraglows since they supply the driver plate voltage from the 2A3 cathode bias resistor, which is another way to avoid this issue when building a directly coupled 2A3 amp.
There was at least one issue with 2A3-40s dying in a Stereomour, but in a cap coupled AC heated 2A3 amp that runs the tubes by the numbers, it gets really tough to blame the amp manufacturer...