A Black Box to Solve Everything

Listening to tube amps, I don’t hear the effects as desirable like some people do. It does seem though that a solid state amp can be made to sound much more like a tube amp than the other way around. So, I’m told you can run the output of a low powered SET tube amp through a voltage divider and into the input of a solid state amp, and then run the solid state amp out to the speakers. What you get is the sound of the tube amp sans its interaction effects with the speaker, which it is now buffered from by the solid state amp. So you’re hearing your tube amp playing into a very stable and high impedance load, which is what it would prefer. The real, messy impedance load of the speaker is much better handled by the solid state amp.

Very Interesting asctim.

If you're looking to find what distortion signature you like here is an exercise I went through myself. In a DAW, I used Reaper, instantiate a tone generator plugin, saturator and an EQ with an analyzer. All on the same channel.  I used Fab Filter Saturn 2 and Pro Q.  All of these have a trial period long enough to do these tests. Start experimenting with tones to see what the harmonics look like. Make some presets with varying degrees of Second, Third etc...harmonics added.  Then play your music through your presets.  You'll probably develop a preference.  Then select equipment that tests similar to your preference.  

Generally speaking, if the signature is plainly audible on familiar music it's most likely a poor design or broken. Differences should be very subtle in well designed/built gear.