Would You Rather Own A Good SET Amp, Or A Great Push Pull Amp?

Thanks to everyone who contributed their thoughts and input. After deeply and carefully exploring my own thoughts, and pondering everything commented on here, in particular your insights, Ralph, I made the decision, yesterday to purchase the PP dream amp (monoblocks). 

I had been looking for this particular 2a3 PP amplifier for over eight years, and had a daily checkpoint, over that entire time, to see if Hi-Fi Shark showed any coming up for sale in North America. Over that period, I had become enamored with SETS, possibly due to not having any other great options. But this amplifier finally appearing got me back on track. 

The story, unfortunately, has a rather sad conclusion. When I called to purchase it, they were literally on another line with someone who had beaten me to the punch by perhaps two minutes, at most. This is almost certainly the end of that dream. I’m retired, who knows if I will even be alive when another one appears, IF it even does, or for this kind of price. Not to mention, my hearing is still fine, but I have any number of friends who have been impacted with age related hearing loss. And once that happens, you only choice is to sell off your quality audio gear and try to learn to cope with listening to music reproduced in much lesser quality, since, at that point, it won’t matter anyway. 

It appears that my existing "good" SET is what I will have to live with. 

I thought I had a bit of time to purchase the amp because it was not generally even known to be on sale. And then, either Monday night, or early yesterday, some hours before I called to purchase it, all of that changed, which I was unaware of. It’s my unforgiveable mistake to live with. And regrets for likely as long as I can listen to music. Oh well, it could be worse, I could be dead or imprisoned.

@nightfall - so sorry to hear this 😔 - it will take awhile, but the gutted feeling does go away. 
 

@sns - I have this thought about music playback in relation to fidelity - that while most of us seek the most true-to-life presentation of what we hear, the highest fidelity does not happen when the performer/artists of each track we hear is brought into our listening space with utter realism in homogenising timbre and tone, but rather when we are transported from our listening rooms to the specific venue of resonant air where the recording took place, in the process of differentiation. High fidelity is about sorting the differences of realism from track to track rather than homogenising similarity of realistic outcome - the idea that preference for a more forward presentation does not represent high fidelity, because not all performances were recorded with emphasis on a forward presentation. I wondered what your thoughts are about this.

In friendship - kevin

@nightfall - Selling your gear because of age-related hearing loss may be YOUR only option, but it's certainly not the only option for people like me who wear hearing aids, and I've worn them for over 20 years. Just bought a fine new tube preamp yesterday, in fact. 

@kevn There is still plenty of differentation and or uniqueness amongst recordings, this includes sound staging. Still you can't get past inherent or a static generalized pattern of sound staging with any particular system, therefore, my system will always project images further forward than a system that has a more distant sound stage. A more forward sound stage also inherent to horn speakers in general, this why horn shape so critical to get right. Formerly had exponential mid horn in my Khorns, went to Volti tractrix horn, loads the room far more naturally than the exponential horn. Back to sound staging, my extensively modded Khorns (includes tweeter on custom baffle for proper physical time allignement)  have plenty of center image depth, so performers aren't right on top of you, thing is with necessary placement of khorns in corners and horn relative directionality hard panned info is necessarily projected out more into room and sticks to speaker more than other designs. I previously used Merlin VSM, you probably couldn't find a speaker that images, sound stages more different than khorns, Merlins well out into room away from all walls, narrow baffle, speakers disappear, more distant sound stage even with SET, with push pulls a bit more distant. And I've had any number of open baffle speakers over the years which sound stage and image in their own unique ways.  Bottom line is I've always managed to achieve a believable sound stage with every setup and system. Room treatments absolutely critical for this so have wide variety of treatments on hand for use whenever needed. 

So, what I'm trying to say is, there are so many presentations available to audiophiles, I've heard entirely engaging systems that span the entire spectrum of audio, so everything from high power SS with very inefficient, highly complex crossover speakers to flea power SET with highly efficient speakers, and everything in between. I'm actually totally agnostic when it comes to topology, if it sounds good it sounds good, how it gets there is for the designers/engineers to figure out. If I had the money and the room I'd have a dozen systems, each completely unique in regard to topology and sound qualities. 

@atmasphere. I'm only getting to respond to your response to my comment now due to the fact that in transferring to fibre broadband, my ISP managed to leave me with no internet access at all for several days - only resolved just now.

The original Halcro amplifier was, for me, the most vivid demonstration of how an ultra low distortion amp with multiple levels of NF can sound utterly unmusical.