simbalion

I had a Fender vintage tube bass amp and that sucker had such sustain when used with an electric solid body guitar!

IMO, the real reason tubes sound so good is that they are almost always Class A amplifiers. There are a few solid state amplifiers that are Class A as well like my Denon PMA-520. There was a Yamaha Pyramid amp from the late 70's that was Class A solid state and every one of these sound incredible to my ear. Steve Hoffman says: The big advantage of Class A is that designers can make simpler circuits that are very linear with low distortion at low power. Class AB designers have to make more complex circuits using feedback to get very low distortion levels.