for me, because it's fucking easy to play around with a tube amp, there are like 5 standard tubes that are readily made vs. various op amps, BJTs, FETS, Power Transistors. You can make your own design of an amp (and they are fairly simple to build), and there is a wealth of schematics and information available. Newer and solid state designs have higher component and densities on their circuits in order to get get them to sound good like a classic tube amp. In a way, these archaic designs are very simple and very effective, that's the bottom line. A new peavey is very simple for a machine to populate and solder too, but not easy to work on or play around with, and they sound generic and less inspiring.

That being said, I think if somebody really wanted to they could make a solid state amp to be as effective and good sounding as a tube amp, but large companies often fail at this, and the smaller (usually smarter) companies aren't really bothering with solid state stuff. However, the acoustic brand stuff sounds cool (even for guitar) and I do like some of the old solid state stuff for their sounds. Also, nearly all effects are purely solid state.

The Brownsville sold state amps are real nice. Sam Ash had them built by the Korean company that made the solid state fenders. Whoever designed them really did a good job the eq is especialy fine (cut boost). Sounds pretty nice.

Those red knobed Fenders tube amps from the late 80's were considered garbage when they came out (tube fender twins but hybred somehow) now they are collectables.

"Collectables"? They're still cheap and difficult to sell around here. You want some? I'll sell them to you for "collector" prices.

zom-zom wrote:Sabatiers? They're fine, but I never had any problems with stainless not being sharp enough.

Plus there's the tradeoff that the old knives get dull faster, and require a bit more maintenance.

I have carbon and stainless Sabatiers. I guess I could clarify that although you can achieve a good sharpness with either, I find the carbons sharpen sharper in a shorter space of time. I'll say that again:sharpen sharper in a shorter space of time. Shhhhhh. Maybe maintenance is why I like them more...

You like to sharpen knives. I spent most of my life working in kitchens, cutting things up. I don't like to sharpen knives, I just like to get things done.

Fair point. Here's to quality knives of any denomination!

Knives are so cool.

I use a JC120 and I gotta say I prefer it to a lot of tube amps...

My two cents:
My tube 30 watt 1X8 Sears Silvertone will blow all living fucking hell out of my solid-state 60 watt 1X12 DaVinci any day of the week.