A nice read on tubes!

Fisher 500 mentioned is a true champ.
Empire turntables all over on vintage adds and pictures.
Tube receivers and amps of the past can easily compete with today's high-end tube units with substantially better built quality and offered todays prices... If I were to switch to tubes than perhaps Fisher 500 would be my choice 1 and HH Scott 299 is second, but I simply chose solid states because of the downsides of tubes above mentioned. I simply want to listen to music and solid states make it substantially more convenient.

I've had both a Scott 299 and Fisher X-100, and neither comes anywhere close to the sound quality of my current EAR and Music Reference electronics. Nostalgia is swell, but come on!

I frequently get on my soapbox about design sensibilities (irrespective of chosen architecture"), and the fact that we (as audiophiles) lose track of what I consider to be the takeaway from this article:

"It doesn’t matter if it’s tubes, transistors, or a hamster on wheel. All that matters is that you got lost in the music."

All in all, a well-written article directed primarily a people with no direct experience of our madness.

Predictably, Kevin Hayes and Charlie Hansen paint two very different pictures (tubes vs. solid state), and you know which side of the fence I land on ;-)

I did find Hansen’s disparaging comments about tube longevity to be a bit self-serving and disingenuous however - doing his best to create FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt).

Cheers,
Thom @ Galibier Design