From tubes to solid state

The problem with tubes is the tubes! Fifteen years ago I went wild on an ARC SP6 and had it on two chassis and voiced the thing around Sylvania ladder plate/rectangular Getter 12AX7s and Brimar 6DJ8s.....It was a wonderful unit, but the only thing stock was the circuit board.....I had enough tubes to just get into trouble and had folks searching all over the place for the Sylvanias and only found a couple more at that time.....I had to sell the unit and bought an SP-11 and that stayed stock for almost three weeks before it was rewired and recapped....I sold it in a year or so and keep my hopped up ARC SP3A-1 in the garage for comparisons and have gone all solid state.....The point is it is hard to find good NOS tubes and lots of folks would go SS just to forget the hassles of buying good tubes....

I switched from the CJ55 to the Krell KSA 100s a year ago. The CJ was a nice amp but the Krell is clearly superior. On Roger Waters Amused to death thru my theta CD system, the CJ would place things from FR to rear left but they wouldnt flow from FR-RL, the Krell would make the music flow accross the room. With Vinyl the SS was vastly superior because of a much lower noise floor. Analog with SS is a major plus. CD with SS (how can I put This) NAH! the warmth of most tube amps is a real plus for digital sound.
The Krell just allows me to use any speaker, which is a benifit also

To Rcrump, I sell Sylvania ladder plate, black plate, with the rectangular getter, NOS. You just have to know where, to look.

Fletchj where were you fifteen years ago? If I had been able to get those Sylvanias I probably wouldn't have hooked up with Curl to do SS amps, preamps and the like....

I just went from tubes (Rogue Magnum 120) to solid state (Plinius SA100 MKIII) driven by Rogue Magnum 99 pre and I can tell you the state is very solid indeed.
The Plinius amp is very tuneful, nuanced, defined and neutral. The Rogue in comparison had very rich harmonics and amazing depth but was dull and a little lifeless plus the bass was a little thick and ill defined. I liked the Rogue very much but to combine the negatives in sound and the cost of new tubes every 2-3 years and I have less money for music and start feeling a little guilty about not being practical and buying solid state. The Plinius is more often reminding me of real instruments in my room than the Rogue was anyway. My speakers are Maggie 1.6 and I could image if I had other speakers I might have kept the Rogue but, maybe not, my system is not dull but it lacked high end air with the Rogue and not with the Plinius. I had also tried the Innersound ESL amp and I preferred that to the Rogue too.
These comments are after 20+ years of listening (primarily)to tubes.