Solid State vs. Tubes - What if Transistors came first?

Andy2, I don't know what current SS amplifiers are using, but older amps used standard rectifiers, most never used snubber circuits to deal with the fact that diodes ring. Replacing them with soft recovery rectifiers like IXYS bridge rectifiers clears up a lot of strange issues with midrange and high frequency noise.

I don't believe that many, if any non electronic instruments go much over 15 or 16K, so I don't think that good tubes are a hindrance with regards to treble. You have found one amp you like. I'd guess that some Levinson amps, as well as some Spectral, and I hear JC1's and Nelson Pass's amps are top performers. The point being that with such a finite selection of really good SS amps, it ought to be no surprise that there aren't a lot of good sounding tube amps and preamps.

One huge problem for tubes if they were developed later would be the LACK of mountains of NOS tubes we do have now. Plus all the old machines still churning out tubes in Russia. If tubes came later, there would be no NOS at all. Only a few makers of new tubes, and a far more limited variety of tubes available. And tubes would be many times more expensive. Since no NOS (by the millions) to keep the prices low(er) NOS tubes are like the icebergs..Think of the millions stashed away in collectors hands...(I am NOT a tube maven, and I still have 50 or so just sitting around)

@fleschler, Roger Modjeski also get’s 100 watts out of a pair of KT88’s in his Music Reference RM-200 Mk.2, with well less than 1% distortion (look at the listening impressions and bench test results in it’s review in Stereophile a few years back). He does so not by driving the tubes hard, but by creative engineering. I somewhere read his explanation of how he did it, but don’t recall where. Give him a call, he likes to talk and is a real swell fella.

Well, I believe that John Curl went into a very enlightening discussion on how easily the standards can be gamed, not that that's happening in this case, but specifications are a lot more pliable than most understand. Again, I don't know these manufacturers, but 50wpc rms into 8 ohms is 100wpc rms into 4 ohms, and 50wpc rms is 100wpc, to name a few ways to spin things that I am familiar with. New Sensor claims 2 x 33 watts max for their tubes, 2 x 30 being the norm, so 50wpc gives you a nice cushion but 60wpc is within spec. Perhaps you ought to be asking those manufacturers how they can get more out of a tube than the manufacturer of the tubes says is reasonably possible. OTOH, if you listen to Kevin Deal of Upscale Audio, within a particular tube line, acceptable specifications greatly vary, so presumably they could be buying only tubes that exceed specifications. I personally would consider that to be deceptive unless they insist that those outputs are only obtainable using tubes sold by them. Furthermore, the best of the best tubes fade, so be it 100wpc, or 50wpc, as tubes age, your output capability will drop!