So what went wrong and thousands and thousands of guitar players all over the world ditched their pedals and either went for "modifications" of their 800s or bought SLOs/5150s or Rectifiers??
I was only having a laugh. I know there is way more to it than just single tube or diodes.
I remember using 100w JCM800s in rehearsal rooms back in the day and absolutely hating them. It turned out that the reason (at least in my case) was that I just never got them running hard enough for the power amps to really saturate and do their thing. With those amps, a large part of the magic was in the output section.
I still have a Rev G Rectifier that was my main amp from around 1996 until I got the Kemper and I love it but that amp and Soldanos etc rely on the pre-amp for the tone with a clean high headroom power amp to make it loud.
Two very different approaches but both wonderful when done well.
It is true however that a large number of very successful amps did, and still do, use diodes in the clipping section. Almost every Marshall since the JCM800, the JMP1 preamp, Blackstar etc and I believe even the Dumble FET mode is a solid state clipping circuit. Most people don't even know that these "all valve" amps that they love are actually getting their distortion from a build in overdrive pedal.