Where are you today?

It depends on ones mood and perspective really. One should have two systems. Synergy can make up for alot of what one may attribute to any particular technology, so feel the music...see the music...be the music! When you become one with your system you have arrived grasshopper.

I started with tubes, went SS briefly, went back to tubes and never looked back. The economy has had nothing to do with it.

I came to realize that to achieve the goal of making the music sound real, the equipment had to be designed to obey the rules of human hearing rather than a set of arbitrary bench rules, which often have nothing to do with human hearing at all. You can't do that with transistors (not to say that that might change in the future...).

Solid state to tubes back to solid state back to tubes back to solid state back to tubes back to solid state and now back to tubes. All in the past year. Who said this wasn't a fun hobby?

I sold all of my ss gear this year. My reference system uses a tubed integrated (Cary SLI 50) and sealed box speakers (Triad System 3). I purchased the Cary in 1996 and it replaced a Pioneer surround receiver in my tv room. It transformed a system that sounded mediocre at best to something that is fantastic just by substituting that one component. Early on, I made some attempts to improve the sound with cables and power conditioners but all the changes resulted in degraded performance. So it has become my reference due to the fact that it sounds fantastic and I have changed only the tv and the cabinet in the last 12 years. I always judge changes in the big system by their comparison to the reference. Did the change make sense musically?

The big system is all tubed by VAC. I love my preamp and I switch between the two VAC amps, the PA100/100 has a more intimate or classic tube sound and the PHI 110 is more neutral with more bass extension. I just purchased new sealed box speakers for this system (ESP Bodhran's) since I decided that type of bass is one of the things I really liked about the reference system.

The economy hasn't kept me from spending money. I just purchased the speakers (ouch) and ordered two more tube traps from ASC. I'm not sure what I would look at buying next.

I went from solid state seperates to solid state integrated to a tube integrated which is where I am now. I found that the tube integrated had a musicality that none of my prior SS amps exhibited.
Although I find that it takes the right tubes to make a tube amp sing. Not any old tube will do. A SS amp could still be a possibility in the future, but right now I'm enjoying tubes too much to care.