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Arny Krueger wrote: snip

It is true that cheap-ass tubed equipment is far more technically
deficient than some of the expensive stuff. There's no reason why a
price-is-no-object tubed amp can't sound good and accurate when that
high price is invested in a technically sophisticated way.

That's exactly what I said. If you are willing to spend money either
tubes or solid state may be used to build good amplifiers.

You get far more performance for the money with SS. The cost of a audibly
clean SS amp is far less than one that is tubed.

Good solid state ones IMO aren't cheap either.

OK, your opinions tend toward the fantastic.

They need (IMO) big heat sinks and quiet low impedance power supplies.

Heat sinks and power transformers are cheap compared to either good output
transfomers or enough tubes to eliminate the need for an output transformer.

Then there's the size and lack of reliability.

From a scientific point of view, I'll allow that I might be deluded.
So I'll just leave science out of it and say that it's a matter of
taste. Some like chiantis; others chablis. Their subtleties are
really incomparable.

When I see tubophiles obsesse over some the the butt-cheap tubed
gear I used to sell at Lafayette, I have to smile. That stuff
sounded like crap on the
first day of its life. Lafayette had some good stuff, but the volume
sales were in bottom-priced crap.

The offensiveness of the "crap" was at least more pleasant sounding to
the ear in the opinion of most listeners than the offensiveness of
much solid state gear-much of it high dollar.

Most listeners dumped tubes as soon as practically possible, or before.

The Dyna ST70 and some
Heath and Eico gear with decent OPTs will provide the hobbyist with a
platform to build a reasonable tube amp if he is so inclined (if
you're willing to run just one channel of the ST70 or replace the
power transformer or, best, build a choke filtered outboard power
supply.)

Most tube experts will tell you that the even the best Dyna, Heath and Eico
output transformers were not up to the standards of McIntosh or the better
Acrosounds.