[FrankHudson]

Originally Posted by Rmccamey

"When my baby boomer generation is looking at the sod from the wrong side, there won't be much demand for vacuum tubes."

I think your estimate is far too early but I get your point. At some time there won't be much demand for guitars or guitarists either as programming sounds and songs on a computer will be done in a fraction of the time and a fraction of the cost of buying the gear and actually learning how to play. Of course, there will always be a few diehards around who drive a horse and buggy, use Morse code and play guitar.

I was trying to ignore the "those dang lazy young'uns who never apply themselves to anything" observations, since I'm not over them being applied to me an my cohort 50 years ago or more

But then it occurred to me, as a person who uses computers and sometimes programming to make music (and from some programmers I've run into in my old IT career, there's actually a lot of overlap in music composition and computer programming) that there's something attractive to the string instrument "user interface" regardless of what makes the eventual sounds that then hit the listener's ear. I wish guitar MIDI interfaces could magically pick up more of what pleases us when we play our instruments. I suppose wind instrument players feel the same way. That's not an intellectual argument or even a sonic argument, it's a sensuousness thing. I suppose it could still go in and out of fashion or even disappear--but it'll take more than tube amps going away to kill it.

Unrelated thought, from a non-EE: wouldn't it be possible to produce a pin compatible tube model circuit that would be backward compatible with say a 6V6, EL84 etc if classic tube manufacture became more difficult? I suppose the R&D costs keep this from happening, at least at the present time.