By the book people mostly do sensible amp designs that work and sound very good. Ask many on here that have tube amps such as Scott, Fisher, McIntosh, Heathkit ETC... and they will tell you how good they sound.
I have over 30 vintage amps, Harman Kardon, McIntosh, Fisher, Scott, EICO, Dynaco, etc. And as good as they sound I found that my own custom made amps sound better. You might consider that all commercially available amps are built to a price point and a custom builder can build using similar components but to a higher performance level.
"Listener people often build amps with lots of snake oil then claim it sounds so much better. Possibly in hopes they can justify how much $$$ they spent on that two watt single ended triode amp. "
What is the basis for this statement. I have been associated with this hobby for over 20 years, looked at hundreds if not thousands of pictures of home made amps, and i have not seen any snake oil in any of them.
This statement is similar to Dowto's about audio being 2 camps, listener people and by the book people. The fact is the foundation for all vacuum tube amplifiers are based on seminal books by a few gifted individuals and whose ideas were later expanded and updated by others as new technology evolved. And just as it was back in the golden age of tube audio as it is still done now, and just as important as theory and engineering is the final "tweaking by ear" to achieve or verify a certain sound quality.
"Single ended amps have several issues that were solved with push pull amps."
Sure PP amps can produce more power and might test with lower distortion numbers. But if power and distortion numbers were the whole story then what do you say to those tens and hundreds of thousands of SE amp owners who have set aside their PP and feel that a SE amp has qualities that their other amp can not provide.
I think the point is that different people like different things for different reasons. And to say that one type of construction or mode is better than another just limits the options or variations that can be a better fit to one's particular situation vs. someone else's niche.
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