What year did tube lose to SS

Decades ago I worked in sales at a high end audio dealer in DC.  I'll never forget how the B&W folks who visited were "concerned" over how dull their flagship model sounded in our showroom, drove all over DC to find replacements for the power amp tubes (can't remember which amp), once replaced, the speakers sounded awesome!

With that in mind, I've shied away from tubes....until a few months ago.  Some of my audio buddies worked on me to consider getting a tube preamp, letting me know that in low power applications, tubes would last a long time.

I replaced my solid state preamp with a tube unit and immediately enjoyed a more musical "bloom", especially in acoustic piano.  Now that I've swapped out the original equipment tubes for better models from Russia, this preamp just sounds awesome!

The digital media sentence was an example of a major industry shift.  I remember as a kid that we had Sherwood tube equipment, but by the time the mid 60s had gone by tube gear was not what most HiFi shops were offering.  Until fairly recently there were only a few brands of tube gear available (during the 70s and 80s, 90s). It was a question asking when people remembered that shift from tube to SS.  It was not a question about digital vs analog. Almost all of my current gear is tube BTW.

It's been interesting to see during my 5 decades plus long career as a pro guitar player how SS stuff attempted to get into the guitar amp market. Weird Fender stuff, Gibson "Lab" series amps (actually one of the better ones), the extremely popular Roland Jazz Chorus 120...I tried them (I actually bought a Fender London Reverb in 1981 or something…meh…), as well as many other working guitar players I know, and, with the exception of a few Ultra Clean Tone jazz dudes (Polytone amps come to mind), pretty much everybody gave up on SS with few exceptions. The harmonic content and snappy response of tube amps simply feels and sounds right. Now I prefer relatively low watt stuff, including boutique-ish single ended amps.

I was a heavy listener when it happened, probably 69-70. It brought down the cost of watts considerably and those inefficient speakers often came to life. They certainly weren't as musical but at that time we were attempting to break windows and my Phase Linear 400 was up to the task. Yes, it oscillated and yes it took out some speakers. But I still say it wasn't a bad sound, until it went up in smoke. No smoke actually but it was fried for sure.