Don't sell your tube amps

I dragged JBL festooned Twins around (anvil case included, insanely heavy) for most of the 70s, and use small all tube amps exclusively now, including a brilliant little 5/15 watt Reverend Goblin I recently loaned to John Pizzarelli for a live show. Most guitar players I know and like now use much smaller amps...Jim Campilongo, Princeton (fender actually made a special model for him)...Julian Lage, either tiny 50’s tweeds or Magic "Deluxe" size...Frizell, Deluxe Reverbs...Duke Levine, toured with Bonny Raitt recently with an AC 30 or something (he owns a lot of amps)...few guitar players want or need 100 watts of any style amp, and prefer the snap and color of a tube output stage. Sure, that could change, but only when Class D really can seriously replicate the harmonic content and feel of tubes. Is anybody going to bother to make a 15 watt Class D amp? Note I have a Class D 350 watt bass amp that sounds great...for bass anyway.

As a long time pro guitarist I can say for certain that class D will not be replacing tube guitar amps for those who care about tone. I've tried various modeling amps and others including those with tube front ends, and the necessary distortion characteristics from a tube output stage aren't ever likely to be replaced by class D. 

Obviously there are many solid state amps that do a great job as Atmasphere pointed out, and many (including my Pass XA-25) are "tube like" in their design and some are Class A room heaters. One thing often left out of these conversations is the fact that no SS amp allows you to easily swap out transistors based on your listening mood. In my tube Had amp (and in my guitar amps) I swap in 6V6s, KT88s, 77s, 120s, 150s, 6550s, etc. including various brands of those (all sounding a little different) and various smaller preamp input tubes and rectifiers. Why? It's FUN. And, as has been mentioned previously, they look and can sound astonishingly beautiful, although maybe fooling me into having fun by providing a bit of some sort of pleasant and harmonically appropriate distortion...again tricking me into thinking I'm really enjoying the music. Sad but true. Tubes can simply sound great, last a long time, and provide some listener interaction with their ease of replacement. What's wrong with that?

Today I swapped out my "tube like" Pass XA-25 for my Dennis Had SEP (pentode) amp and man...it's just nice to hear the subtle differences. I'll keep these amps forever.