Meanwhile, my kids and I are looking for old, trashed out tube amps to recycle. Maybe I'll build something I like more. So, yeah, I have to say, the tube amps just sound better. It wasn't easy to give up my EE prejudice for the vastly superior transistor, and transformerless outputs, and all that other stuff. But I did.
Some people say that tube amps color the sound.
Maybe they just do something in a way that matches how the ear functions, or the brain processes sound. I don't know. I just know it sounds better. But I'd sure hate to go back to the days of vacuum tube computing. And I'm hanging on to my Big Muff Pi.