Solid State vs. Tubes - What if Transistors came first?

Sort of funny, I think. For most of us transistors did come first! Then there was the tube 'Renaissance'. Wonder why anyone was interested if  transistors were so good? :-)

I can remember trucking SS amps home to match my Thiels, amp after amp after amp. My back still hurts. Then I got an ARC SP 10 and a Threshold SA3.  It worked just fine. Only took me five years to get the issues solved. Thank god for the tubes. I just sold that old pre a few years ago at a profit, no less.

The ’ages’ of an audiophile. In the first age (the beginning) the ’audiophile to be’ has superb hearing acuity, no money, an inexpensive SS system, and he is happy until he acquires some knowledge, money, and for many, a divorce.

Middle age occurs. He still has pretty good hearing, has more money, buys better equipment, and discovers why tube equipment sounds so good. He now obsesses over all things, buys tube equipment, rolls tubes endlessly, and can avoid all of the nasties from digital stuff. Etc.

The last stage begins with the onset of advanced age. His hearing acuity is substantially degraded by a sloping of high frequencies, digital stuff is no longer as intrusive, the loss of the benefits of ’tube sounds’ has become apparent so he questions whether or not he should downgrade his system and return to SS equipment. Probably a good thought!

Questions for today, 1) Are most advocates of SS sound old fellas? 2) Why do many manufacturers and sellers of SS stuff say (in its ads) its warm (to some degree or another) and sounds like tubes. Rarely do they say it ’sounds’ like SS? (I did note that the designer/manufacturer of the Kinki amp which is so much talked about here did in fact say that his amp was not warm, a rare bit of honesty I think.

maritime51, did I step on your little pinky?  Speaking about worthless contributions..............:-)