Tube Equipment: Gimmick?

The attraction of tubes is the "presence" of the music, at least to me. Many ss guys will demur. The best tube and ss designs probably have more in common than differences, at least I keep reading it although I haven't realized it first hand yet, maybe the Boulder? Talking to an Engineer will resolve nothing, just check the archives here, a very popular topic it is.

You will get a straight answer by listening for yourself and come to your own conclusions, it really is the only way. Please keep us posted on your conclusions, I expect from the title of your thread, the controversy will continue.

There's great tube gear and great solid state gear. There is also bad tube gear and bad solid state gear. Your taste in music/volume/room will absolutly dictate the type of equipment you prefer. Unfortunately, you need to educate yourself by listening in person to get that preference. You cannot listen to other peoples oppinions because they are comming at the question ( what do I prefer for my type of music?) usually from a totally different direction and perspective. I never heard tube gear before until I was at Holm audio looking for a solid state amp when I was blown away by the sound comming from the other room. I could not believe how realistic the vocals sounded and how alive and bouncy the music was. Yup, it was a 3watt single ended Cary going into the Soliloqy 2A3's. I now know what is possable with tubes and know one will ever have any credability with me who says tubes are no good. I have now educated myself with the single-ended tube amps, the push-pull tube amps and have solid oppinions of what they sound like and in what kind of systems I would prefer each kind. I also now look for that SET magic when shopping for solid state as one reference for judging. My current system is all solid state (digital amps) but it has been totally chosen by the knowledge of knowing what tubes sound like which has given me a much much better "for my music" system than I have ever had before. If money were no object, I bet most music lovers would have several systems (tube and solid state) and many speakers-

Gimmick? Depends what you mean with that word.
Gimmick as 'tricking' innocent folks into parting with $$$$... no.
Gimmick as Finding the best sound to the person spending the $$$, and being willing to fool around with almost any 'gimmick' to get there? yes.
I had a tube pre, and absolutely LOVED it.
But the repeated repairs (counterpoint) made me go back to SS. (dependability to me is a very big issue)

I was auditioning the latest McIntosh six channel solid state amp when the salesman decided to tease me a bit by turning on the McIntosh 2102 tube amp. I accused him of changing speakers. He had to show me that everything was wired the same and that it was just the other (tube) amp.

I was so convinced that I now own the 2102. Your friend might like computer composed music too, as it is so....perfect.

It is a mistake to assume that tube equipment is less "accurate" than solid state gear.

Here is a recent M.I.T. thesis you might be interested in looking at:

http://web.mit.edu/cheever/www/cheever_thesis.pdf

On page 26, for example, Cheever discusses the 45 tube:

"The type 45 produces the most linear open loop transfer characteristic over a large portion of its operation range of any device I have tested, solid state or otherwise."

"In chapter 2 I show that the open-loop behaviour of an amplifying element strongly determines the end circuits subjective sound quality".