SS amps that sound like tubes?

BAT VK500. Best amp I've heard (and now own) and with electrostatics the only SS amp I've heard that makes smooooooooth music that makes me smile. The VK500 can be had for ~$2500 used and well worth the money.

If you ever listen to a great tube amp you would say that no SS sounds remotely close to that real tube effect. Many claim to for selling purposes and many great ss amps are listed here but no cigar.

Consider the Sim Audio Moon W-5
johnny7

Ligi, is your cigar a pleasing fequency response anomoly provided by your tube amp? Maybe it's just a great speaker/room/amp synergy that provides a spectral landscape you like. Perhaps a great ss amp with a different speaker could provide the same magical cigar? I tried supposedly-great VAC glass on my Parsifal Encores, and it absolutely slaughtered their carefully-honed neutrality! Glad my Alephs sound great AND allow these great speakers tocome alive in my room as their quite expert voicers intended.
This is not to mean that ss is better...just more predictable at the getgo. A high output impedence and a multi-driver cum passive crossover array is an exercise fraught with variability. If you get really lucky the world seems better, but I contend that it's a LOT easier to get there with a great speaker in a well-treated room and a NEUTRAL fine amp, and that led me to Pass Labs...and NO, they're not for sale! Let's all just enjoy the music...and continue to pass the cigar.

I've been collecting audio toys for years. Currently I own a few small tube amps, and one solid state amp. For a long time I always thought "Solid state. Why do people bother ?". Powerful yes, but afflicted by dry, lifeless transistor haze. Either too edgy and bright, or so toned down you ventured into midfi. Music on a really big black and white tv.

I've changed my opinion in the last year or so. The truly great ss amps don't sound like tube amps so much as solid state with great soundstaging, instrument timbre, and lack of transistor grain. I would guess that many people could not tell by ear that an ayre or pass labs amplifier is NOT a tube amp.

Strangely enough one of my friends who is a college trained sax player commented that he liked the 'sound' of my cary 300 B amp, but felt the ss ayre sounded 'more like a real horn'.