@lou_setriodes Nelson understands the importance of lower ordered harmonics since you can't eliminate distortion altogether (this is a lot bigger topic than there might be room for on this thread!). So his stuff doesn't have that dryness to which you allude above. But a good tube preamp shouldn't be particularly warm- just neutral :)
they alll seem somewhat sterile and lifeless. IMHO, they all need a tube preamp to warm them up
Perhaps using the word "warm" to describe tube sound isn't the right word. Sweet sounding might be better, at any rate, with tubes, there's a certain something there - warm, sweet, euphonic whatever it is that just sounds so right and is to me more appealing than listening to solid state. Maybe even order distortion is the term I'm looking for.