Funny with the amount of tube amplifiers I see at shows I hardly see this as the product being in it’s twilight. JJ tubes maybe of questionable quality, or filaments maybe getting damaged in shipping?
@audio_is_subjective I used that phrase because there are class D amps out there that rival tubes in every way except grace at clipping. The guitar market is the primary market of tube producers; high end audio is a tiny portion of their market. These days many guitar players rely on their effects pedals to get their ’sound’ so the amp only has to be smooth enough (not grating) and otherwise similar limited bandwidth of conventional guitar amps (unless one is talking about a Marshall Major or Ampeg V4, which are built on hifi standards).
Tube guitar amps weigh a lot! At 3:AM in the morning after playing a gig, it makes a difference if the amp weighs 85 pounds or only 15. Now that there are musical class D guitar amps out there its simply a matter of time that they will invade the market more and more since they are more reliable with no change to the ’sound’ that players are looking for. So in ten years the guitar market will look quite different. That means that the major market of tube producers is shrinking and nothing to do with the war in Ukraine or what high end audio is up to.