It's the distortion we like right? :)
So is it just as effective to use any valve amp as its purely subjective on the listener what it's doing to the signal.
The terms harmonics are thrown around which i guess is technically correct, or worse still, liquidity, lushness, euphoric, spaciousness...
My favorite electronic blogger, Dave Jones, does a reverse engineering of a Chinese (cheap) tube headphone amp. You may not be interested in the product but the process of how we reverse engineer audio gear may be useful. It is only 26 minutes so not long: