Solid State vs. Tubes - What if Transistors came first?

Wikipedia has this to say about KT88s and their wattage;
"A KT88 push-pull pair in class AB1 fixed bias is capable of 100 watts of output with 2.5% total harmonic distortion or up to about 50W at low distortion in hi-fi applications."
Just because a tube distorts less obviously doesn't mean it's clean. That said, as I understand it you can get a clean 60 watts out of them. I only worked with tubes in video and announcing systems, I have never worked in tube amplification design, so my knowledge is finite. That's why I went to Don Sachs and Roy Mottram, I have learned a little bit more about them, but I am far from an expert.

Andy2, I don't know what current SS amplifiers are using, but older amps used standard rectifiers, most never used snubber circuits to deal with the fact that diodes ring. Replacing them with soft recovery rectifiers like IXYS bridge rectifiers clears up a lot of strange issues with midrange and high frequency noise.

I don't believe that many, if any non electronic instruments go much over 15 or 16K, so I don't think that good tubes are a hindrance with regards to treble. You have found one amp you like. I'd guess that some Levinson amps, as well as some Spectral, and I hear JC1's and Nelson Pass's amps are top performers. The point being that with such a finite selection of really good SS amps, it ought to be no surprise that there aren't a lot of good sounding tube amps and preamps.

@fleschler, Roger Modjeski also get’s 100 watts out of a pair of KT88’s in his Music Reference RM-200 Mk.2, with well less than 1% distortion (look at the listening impressions and bench test results in it’s review in Stereophile a few years back). He does so not by driving the tubes hard, but by creative engineering. I somewhere read his explanation of how he did it, but don’t recall where. Give him a call, he likes to talk and is a real swell fella.