In most areas of the amp, no you will not see any meaningful difference unless the design is "so poor" that everything must be "perfect"... though those amps rarely if ever see the light of day because they are not stable enough for real world applications. This is especially true of complex feedback designs (not often seen in tube topologies but they do exist) There can be areas where tighter tolerances can be useful, but in general they are few and far between on a guitar or bass amp. Specifically differential or impedance balanced circuits, and circuits with lots of complex feedback like some filter topologies that can become unstable... again a poor choice for a manufactured design.
Drain, collector or anode load resistors came to mind when writing my last post. Constant current source biasing resistors as well. Agree on the complex feedback networks as well. Lower noise in critical areas of a circuit still remains a very good reason to go with 1%. Nice post.
Wait a minute here, this didn't sound right from (foggy) memory BUT I just happen to have a copy of the Williamson 1990 reprints in by bookcase and sure enough my memory was correct. All of the elements of the "Williamson design" were well established long before, all they consist of is the assemblage or optimization of these elements to make the complete amp. In fact, the most significant contribution was the global feedback extending all the way to the cathode circuit of the input stage.
This is the basis of the statistics and distribution of tolerances that I previously mentioned
Many tube heads do in fact have DI's, some are taken post output transformer. This is not the same as micing the speaker, but is another viable option that may be better for some and not as good for others.
It was, what set Williamson's designs apart was the combination of elements plus global feedback all the way to the input stage's cathode circuit. All of these elements were used on their own, but he appears to have put them all together first (though even that is doubtful, as a lot of the developments of the era were accomplished simultaneously by different designers).
Smart designers have learned a lot from earlier attempts, plus what the market was asking for. This is how improvements happen in practice.
I use tube amps because of their awesome tubey clean sounds most of all. The inventors of these amps never dreamed anyone at all would be using distortion in their amps, even for guitar amps, and high power tube amps such as the SVT were invented to give bassists a lot of clean power. The distortion was merely an after-the-fact bonus, and the majority of tube amp users still run them clean to this day.
