Steve have you ever heard Wytechs? These tube amps (all SET) have the most bass I've heard of any tube amp. Very fast, tight, in a word, perfect for my tastes. No bloat. A real treat to listen to them.
When you mention you modding the Shanling and the SS turns out sounding better, is this with modding the tube stage as well? Have you thought about disconnecting the headphone stage and coupling these transformers to those of the tube output stage?
I prefer the tube stage of my cd player to the ss stage, but if the tubes aren't right, the ss stage will best it (and I've gone through 3 series of mods so both sections are modded out the wazoo).