Hi George, first off, as many, I think your gear is one of the best available. It has saved my ass and got the work done beautifully on many occasions.
However, a question have been in my mind for some time:
Have you ever experimented or designed with tubes?
I know you are after precision, fast, good bandwidth, reliable, stable, low distortion, good s/n ratio gear, I also know that tubes are usually noisier, and not as transparent as solid state, get hotter and draw more current, but in the event of clipping them, they are much softer and generate even order harmonics so the signal is rounder as opposed to square as in solid state, generating odd harmonics.
What other considerations have made you stay away from tube design?
Do you plan to experiment with tubes in the future?
Is it really impossible to make a tube design as clean as most solid state?
I think an example of a clean and open tube design is the pendulum gear.
Again, it is great to have you here.
Hans Mues