I know, but there are still people here, and elsewhere who think it is a serious crime to allow silicon of any kind in the same room with a tube amp.
I wonder what is the reason why you stick to tube output stage. Why not all sand amp? This is a genuine question, not a troll.
I spent 41 years working in a Motorola facility where at it's peak there were over 1000 engineers of various disciplines. The turnover rate was such that I interacted with thousands of educated people over 41 years. People asked me that question a lot, along with many that went quite a bit deeper.
Again, my usual answer, was along the lines of "because I can."
I was one of those inquisitive kids that took everything apart. In the late 50's and early 60's any electronics that I got (free, or by trading something) used tubes. I knew how to make tube amps, mostly for guitar, by the time I was 10 years old. I would not understand things like impedance, bias, and load lines until my 3 year high school vocational electronics program, which taught tubes.
After getting the job at Motorola, I built mostly solid state stuff, because Motorola gave us free silicon. I rediscovered tubes in the late 90's, and decided to find new ways to make them work better, often in tandem with silicon. The classic tube designers did not have good silicon, or LT Spice.
I could design a nice solid state amp, but plenty or them exist, and I have used some of them. I have no desire to build any of the classic tube designs either. I just found a niche doing things a bit differently, which kept my attention for far longer than I thought it would.
That short attention span has wandered back toward music synthesizers, and again, mine are different.....and some have tubes in them.
