richard,
get your facts right, i have never pretended to be anything more than whats highlighted above, i have a good following in what i have acheived over the years, i have made many pieces of equipment from scratch with no one elses input, and combined my efforts with other well known people in the industry, and when i say from scratch, i mean from scratch, casework, boards, everything, if you want to have a go at people like me,for what ever your reasoning, there are other ways of doing it. i specialise in one paticular part of the audio re-play chain, valves, from studio equipment, to musical instrument amplification, and no, i didnt pick valve technology because as you seem to think its easier, i did it because that was the technology i was mostly into. i have a long history of electronics, my dad was a service engineer from the 1950's on, and repaired, serviced everything from televisions,

to toasters!
anthony...