From tubes back to SS?

Had all tubes for 20+ years. I love tubes but got sick of replacing them. The old stock tubes are rare as well as priced out of this world now, & although the new ones were getting much better, they still didn’t match the old stock from the 50’s 60’s & to a lesser extent, the 70’s. Anyway, went from a SET tube amp (6550 Jeff Korneff / an absolutely wonderful amp) to a Single ended SS (Valvet monoblocks). The Valvets added some detail on top without being at all abrasive while keeping the majority of the mid range beauty. Shortly thereafter, replaced a Sonic Frontiers phono amp for a new Audio Alchemy phono amp with the optional power supply. With that I got detail and a better soundstage. Then replaced the Sonic Frontiers preamp with a Jeff Rowland. The Rowland is in another class all together.

There are trade-offs with SS for sure. That said, I listen to more music now than I ever have in the past & am enjoying it more. Can’t say I’ll never go back though... Maybe the current tube manufacturers will figure out how to pull off the NOS sound quality. Could happen, I guess.

I tried to go back to SS twice.Just can't do it.Maybe if I'd found the right amp and had more disposable income to audition more,idk.

There are still some guys above ground who started with tubes 'cause that's all there was. My first amp was a Fisher X-100A integrated, a nice place to start. Moved on to an AR integrated (solid state, of course), then a Mac C26 pre amp and MC2100 power. In '71 Audio Research started the high end revolution, so it was onward and upward to an SP-3 and D51 & D75 bi-amping the original Magneplanar Tympani T-I. Been tubes ever since, with ss sometimes on dynamic woofers/subs.

I started with tubes when I was a kit, and literally pulled gear from dumpsters and rebuilt it because I had no money.
Friends on mine in high school were all like- 'when are you going to get into the space age?' as if all aerospace gear was somehow all transistor...
That eventually happened. But on my old Altec corner horns and also on my Fulton 80s the solid state was less fulfilling.  So I gunned the solid state electronic crossover and the SWTP Tiger and went to all tubes.

Then I figured out how to do OTLs and I was toast. I did try some solid state amps- the Electron Kinergetics Eagle, BEL 101, Bryston, Pass Labs but none of them seemed to make bass right and the highs were less involving. So I'm still doing tubes...