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

It is a two camp showdown one camp being group 1, who evaluate through solely having used their experiences of End Sound produced and the impression made on them.

The other camp, group 2, who are much lesser in their number than group 1, and are using their understanding of Math to influence their assessment of End Sound having been experienced or not experienced for the supply of a description of what is occurring or expected to occur to an End Sound as a result of the Math.

@pindac There’s a third camp of which I’m a member, whose position was clearly stated by Daniel VonRecklinghausen decades ago when he said 

“If it measures good and sounds bad, — it is bad. If it sounds good and measures bad, — you’ve measured the wrong thing.”

lack of distortion e.g. via excessive negative feedback - doesn’t always speak of good sound, but significant levels of measurable distortion can never qualify an amplifier as high fidelity.

@yoyoyaya This is true! An amplifier can sound quite dreadful if the feedback is improperly applied!

In my case I want the amp to be neutral and transparent, but also musical (which it should be if its really true to the signal). 

If the amp has unmasked higher ordered harmonics it can sound less than musical since the ear uses those harmonics to sense sound pressure and so is keenly sensitive to their presence. Since the ear also uses harmonics to sense tone color, obviously these harmonics can cause the amp to sound harsher and brighter than the actual signal. This is a common problem if feedback is improperly applied. 

So the amp design, if it is to have distortion, must have a benign distortion signature such that its innocuous to the ear. SETs do that, but so do a lot of other amps including some solid state. 

I do have fond memories of that Dynaco ST35, will have first listening session with the Bendix 6094/EL84 amps this weekend. 

@sns Make sure its properly refurbished it its an older one otherwise all bets are off. If a newer one, quite often they are assembled from kits and might have errors. I bought one off of ebay that had this problem. It took a bit of work to get it to come around. There are a good number of updates for that amp BTW that are quite worthwhile. 

All are good,it depends on you.You have to listen to your purchase and in your place...you have to Live with the choice you made.Best of Luck.

@atmasphere Amp in question is special order Tektron, Italian company, amp was Robin at Robyatt Audio personal amp.

Thanks to everyone who contributed their thoughts and input. After deeply and carefully exploring my own thoughts, and pondering everything commented on here, in particular your insights, Ralph, I made the decision, yesterday to purchase the PP dream amp (monoblocks). 

I had been looking for this particular 2a3 PP amplifier for over eight years, and had a daily checkpoint, over that entire time, to see if Hi-Fi Shark showed any coming up for sale in North America. Over that period, I had become enamored with SETS, possibly due to not having any other great options. But this amplifier finally appearing got me back on track. 

The story, unfortunately, has a rather sad conclusion. When I called to purchase it, they were literally on another line with someone who had beaten me to the punch by perhaps two minutes, at most. This is almost certainly the end of that dream. I’m retired, who knows if I will even be alive when another one appears, IF it even does, or for this kind of price. Not to mention, my hearing is still fine, but I have any number of friends who have been impacted with age related hearing loss. And once that happens, you only choice is to sell off your quality audio gear and try to learn to cope with listening to music reproduced in much lesser quality, since, at that point, it won’t matter anyway. 

It appears that my existing "good" SET is what I will have to live with. 

I thought I had a bit of time to purchase the amp because it was not generally even known to be on sale. And then, either Monday night, or early yesterday, some hours before I called to purchase it, all of that changed, which I was unaware of. It’s my unforgiveable mistake to live with. And regrets for likely as long as I can listen to music. Oh well, it could be worse, I could be dead or imprisoned.

@nightfall - so sorry to hear this 😔 - it will take awhile, but the gutted feeling does go away. 
 

@sns - I have this thought about music playback in relation to fidelity - that while most of us seek the most true-to-life presentation of what we hear, the highest fidelity does not happen when the performer/artists of each track we hear is brought into our listening space with utter realism in homogenising timbre and tone, but rather when we are transported from our listening rooms to the specific venue of resonant air where the recording took place, in the process of differentiation. High fidelity is about sorting the differences of realism from track to track rather than homogenising similarity of realistic outcome - the idea that preference for a more forward presentation does not represent high fidelity, because not all performances were recorded with emphasis on a forward presentation. I wondered what your thoughts are about this.

In friendship - kevin