Meanwhile, I am still heartbroken about losing the amp, and by minutes. Something almost certainly never recoverable from. Eight years of effort, and hope, lost all at once.
Well, if it’s any consolation, I usually find that when I’ve placed a certain product up on the proverbial pedestal for a long time, I typically end up disappointed when/if I finally experience said product. I bet there was a strong chance you would’ve found fault with those amps in short order.
I’ve still yet to encounter an audiophile system that sounded “perfect,” to my ears, regardless of price. This leads me to suspect there is no real “perfect” component out there either. Tube amps are especially imperfect IME. All of them have some rather significant shortcoming, whether it be noise, distortion level, lack of headroom, dynamics, detail etc… Same can be said for good solid state, but to a lesser extent IME.
You might be better off with a class A solid state amp like the Pass XA25 or one of the wide heatsink Codas (5.5, 12, 16 etc). These amps do nearly everything better than much of what’s out there in tube form.