Why so many tubes?

More tubes more power....Tubes sell...

Are you kidding? Have you not heard? Tubes, sound better!

In 1979 I put together my first assault putting together a high end system by taking out my first loan for $5,000 (that is $18,871 in today’s dollars) for. Threshold s500 amp, my system was all solid state. Over the years of continuously investing and learning, and trading up… one by one each of my components were swapped out for tube equipment. Now, by far the best system I have ever had… all of my components are tubed. (Click on my user ID to see my systems).

Why they have so many tubes and why their prices are (excessively) high?

One would think after 117 years of evolution (1904, invention of the vacuum tube) and with only 4 other components involved (R, C, L, transformer) engineers would have reached the optimal configuration for a tube amplifier by now.

But there’s another ’science’ involved. It’s called Marketing ... the art of tempting people to spend top dollar.

Why they have so many tubes and why their prices are (excessively) high?

One would think after 117 years of evolution (1904, invention of the vacuum tube) and with only 4 other components involved (R, C, L, transformer) engineers would have reached the optimal configuration for a tube amplifier by now.

But there’s another ’science’ involved. It’s called Marketing ... the art of tempting people to spend top dollar.

^All good there^

There use to be horns and large woofers like 18” (or maybe more) at 16 ohms, and 10-15W tube amps.
Then we got direct radiators, and the work of Theil-n-Small… and later a bunch of low impedance drivers. Like Texton says, “4 Ohm drivers are better”.
But also listening levels have probably also jumped 5-10 dB. I do not recall hearing other peoples music in my youth, unless it was a Ghetto Blaster. Now you hop on most any tram, and every ear bid sounds clear enough to make out the song.