@atmasphere
My understanding is that your typical stylus is tipped with some sort of precious stone such as a ruby or diamond. Ortophone brags about the diamond rocks they use. Ain't no piece of plastic in the universe that's that hard. I simply don't understand how one can conclude that dragging a diamond through a plastic trough doesn't cause wear. It defies logic, physics, and study. One of the reasons you want to use sufficient sylus force is to avoid the premature wear of the record caused by the stylus "surfing" over the topology of the groove in an inconsistent way thus wearing more details more than others.
As for the difference between tubes and transistors, I big problem with comparing the two is that transistors and tubes don't have too many analogous parts. JFETs make curves very similar to a triode, but big power JFETs are practically extinct. MOSFETs kinda act like pentodes, but all too often people implement those in topologies not intended to exploit their characteristics. BJTs just don't act like any kind of tube, and those are primarily what people want to base their comparisons on.
There are ways to get clipping characteristics out of a transistor that are similar to a tube. It's just not done often. Besides, if it wasn't for transistors we'd never have had those massive, meaty, chest pounding sounds you get from a Moog or a big console synthesizer.
