I doubt My Pioneers will make a good output stage over Valve Pre Amping ?
Correct, they were fairly average in thier day in reality.
But, its much cheaper to put together a good Mosfet output stage and use a single or double valve pre-amp setup to get the distortion valve sound you seek.
The clip is more a natural sound so i recall?
A nicer sounding Harmonic rather than a nasty square wave on a Scope!
Yep....they 'softly' distort where as a transistor (bipolar or Mosfet) when saturated simply connects the DC rail directly to the output for the short period of clipping.
If you ever did any fourier analysis (a nasty bit of integrtion by parts required), you will under stand how all waveforms are in reality the sum of many sine waves.....and hence under clipping you get 3rd, 5th, 7th.....etc harmonics produced!.
Valves however, distort when not clipping....its the distortion that makes them sound 'soft'.
So, if you want true to life and faithful reproduction of what was recored then its a top notch Mosfet amp and a Cd player.....but many people cant live with a 'pure' sound.
And many main street amps are tuned to a persons ears....e.g. Technics has base boost as standard to give a low down characteristic and Sony even tune thier QS amps to suit a UK 'ear'!....