Small point - 'tube amps' unconditionally sound better than solid state. It's a marked difference that doesn't really require a trained ear or anything, if you played a few chords on a 'warmed up tube amp' vs. 'solid state' to someone who's never seen an electric guitar in real life, they'd be able to hear the difference.
The difference is unambiguous and players overwhelmingly chose tubes, all other things being equal (i.e. cost, hassle). Unless you're playing maybe a very clean sound (jazz?) without the most remote hint of warmth or distortion, tubes are it.
It's ridiculous that someone would call out 'tubes' as somehow being a kind of nerdy/fake/poseur guitarist connoisseur melodrama. It's literally the most important point differentiation of amps, to the point that almost all tube amps sound better than almost all solid state (at least in the same class).
While someone might possibly take umbrage that 'tubes are not always better' - there's basically no room for someone to say it's a 'petty concern'.
I’m struggling to work out what you mean by “warm” here. By a musician’s definition, low impedance pickups and solid state electronics (usually those with input transformers) have produced some of the warmest guitar tones on record. Even a mid-tier archtop plugged directly into a solid state amp produces _incredibly_ warm.
A trained guitarist's ear might notice the difference, but I highly doubt a crow would care. Also you are overstating the difference, and by no means is your opinion uncontested (just putting this out for the non-guitarists in the HN crowd). Even for those who can identify and prefer the tube sounds, digital modellers like Kemper do exist and do exist and seem to do a fine job in blind tests (see for example Anderton's on youtube).
I don’t agree with that, but you don’t deserve the downvotes - plenty of people agree with you. I think the magic is in the way the output tubes interact with the speaker, mostly. But you can get the same responsiveness with a carefully designed solid state output stage. It’s just a lot harder. The coupling through the output transformer allows the speaker to push back against the output tube which adds a little resonance and changes the frequency response, to duplicate that in solid state you have to use a complex feedback loop.
I think yours is the most proper explanation in this thread as to why if anything is special about tube circuits. The more sane guitarists will commonly speak of "tube compression" - on the power amp side, coming into play as volume is cranked - being the key attribute that is sought after. It is dynamic and noticeable enough that a non-musician could most definitely tell the difference in an A/B test if given a demonstration.
The downside is that all of those 100W amplifiers sitting in hobbyist living rooms often don't get enough power to achieve this without being too loud. The solution is just to buy a smaller amplifier or apply attenuation to the output circuit.
