A little off topic but another analogy...
Back in the day, maybe still, Kawai reverse engineered Yamaha pianos - used the same materials. But bless them, they just could not reproduce the Yamaha sound.
Craftmanship I guess...
NOS tubes, why can't modern tubes sound better?
Perhaps this is a useless thread, but why can't currently manufactured tubes at least equal the sound quality of NOS? With the advances in science, why is it that a modern factory cannot exceed the sound quality of the past? Perhaps for the same unexplained reasons that modern violin manufacturers cannot attain the 'Strats'.