I laugh when people say kirk hamster is really good. Someone did tell me that the guitarist from muse was really good once but he doesnt understand anything.
By virtue of their electrical properties, tubes generate a special waveform when they're saturated, which is why tube engineering has tremendous tonal advantages over solid state or DSP solutions, particularly for crunch and lead sounds. Tubes enter the saturation zone gradually or softly, which lends tube-driven tone its trademark yet totally unique character.