Would AC coupling make rolling input tubes easier if the output tube grid voltage could be set independently of the input tube plate voltage?
It's also important that the operating point for a given driver tube makes sense in other ways. For example, if you wanted to use a 12AX7 in the Crack (a bad idea overall), you would have to change the LED out for a cathode bias resistor and you would basically have to use the Speedball. These constraints have nothing to do with the 6080. For some tubes that are a little off, it might give you a tiny bit more flexibility, but not worth it IMO.
Why 6 components? Isn't it just a capacitor and a resistor to ground for each channel?
2 x coupling capacitors
2 x grid leak resistors
2 x extra cathode bias resistors
I attached an image from one of the old RCA manuals that shows what this looks like. C2, R6, and R4 are not present in the Crack design.