[voldacar]

The slight touch of harmonic distortion from a tube amp can sound nice, even though it might not be totally transparent. Tube amps are also a lot of fun to build and tinker with because of the huge diversity in tube models, the operating point at which the tubes are run, the gain stage topology, power supply designs, etc. Personally I find that different tube designs almost always sound a little different from each other while well-designed transistor amps sound indistinguishable or almost indistinguishable from one another.

Pete Millett, who runs a DIY Tube site, made a good presentation on this: http://www.pmillett.com/etf_sod.htm

[jacquesm]

> Tube amps are also a lot of fun to build and tinker with because of the huge diversity in tube models, the operating point at which the tubes are run, the gain stage topology, power supply designs, etc.

You could say all of that about FETs and regular transistors too.

[voldacar]

Yeah that is true, but with tube amps you can tinker around with the circuit and actually hear a meaningful difference, which is more difficult with solid state amplification IME