Would You Rather Own A Good SET Amp, Or A Great Push Pull Amp?

I have two friends with smaller listening spaces, with low power SETs, both sound terrific, meanwhile we all love the sound of my 45 wpc P/P Cayin Tube Amp here (and the 30 wpc P/P Fisher 80AZ Mono Blocks before this). We all have tube preamps,

I've never heard a SET here, my 16 ohm horn speakers from 1958 are extremely efficient, my Cayin has the ability to play in Triode at 22 wc, I prefer the Ultralinear 45wpc option.

I occasionally hear a speck of hum in their systems at idle. Mine is always dead quiet. Both my friends have had problems and needed to ship their SETs out for repairs a few times.   

I cannot say that any topology is obviously superior to another even under narrow parameters, such as a particular output range, much less without any such restriction.  My favorite amps have all been relatively low powered tube amps.  The two very best amps I've heard are wildly different in design.  One is a Western Electric 59 amplifier which is a pushpull 252 amp (crazy rare and expensive). The other favorite is a custom made OTL amp that is one of a kind; the owner has jokingly said that he might be willing  to sell it to me for $250,000 for the pair.

Of the amps I own, I happen to prefer my pushpull 349 amp over a much more expensive parallel 2a3 SET amp, but, they are different in so many ways there is no way to attribute differences to topology.   Only on a very general basis of hearing many different amps over the years that I can sort of generalize that I tend to prefer low-powered pushpull amps over SET amps because they deliver a bit more punch.

@nightfall--would you please tell us the two amps in question? I am particularly interested in learning the name of the PP amp.

I don't know how anyone can answer this conclusively, or for you, every situation entirely unique, variables go on and on. To start with how do you define great vs good, why a great push pull vs only a good SET, why not great to great? If your criteria for great is price, this may not hold for SET. There are many boutique/small operation builders of SET amps, they can custom build you an extremely high quality amp for relatively low price. 

Personally, I've had a number of push pull and SET amps (2a3, 300B, 845) over the decades, thus far SET for me. These days only mono blocks with quality transformers and power supplies, both critical for SET. EL34 my fav push pull tube, very nice mids, still don't compare with immediacy, illusion of performers in room SET is capable of. On the other hand just received Bendix 6094 mono blocks (EL84 iteration), these 12wpc push pulls, reportedly EL84 most closely resemble SET with more impact, we shall see. Bottom line, so many variations of tube amps, only you can determine what's best for your situation.

@ghdprentice + 1 - For me, I care a lot more about how I enjoy the sound than how it got to sound that way.