The other day, I talked to my old friend that got me into this stuff in the first place way back in the day. He's way off in the deep end with this stuff, and has many clues about what he's doing. My clue box is mostly just filled with hair. One thing I didn't realize I didn't know was that your typical set of bookshelf speakers (what this project is intended to drive, which I have not yet sourced, and had pretty much put to the back of my mind as an afterthought) needs more than 20W, and what I've been looking for will either not be powerful enough or will be very expensive. It's looking like push-pull is probably the way to go after all. I still want to keep things as simple as I can (recognizing the obvious complexity that comes with push-pull), and I still want to retain the tube rectification, but it sort of changes the plot a bit... This is meant to be a learning exercise, and there's a good lesson right up front. More or less back to the drawing board, but I feel like I'm coming up with a lot more in the push-pull arena in my naive searchings.
The most generic bookshelf speakers. Eventually I'll build the whole system out from scratch. I also make stringed instruments and have done time in recording studios, so you can kinda see where I'm going with this.