Hi,
Adding to what Bren mentioned, won't it be fun to use a device that generates a rich wash of harmonic distortion, AC hum & noise, and begins deteriorating the moment it's turned on?
I grew up building tube amplfiers for my father (and for myself) but it's horse-and-buggy technology best left and admired for what it did surprisingly well in the first half of the 20th century because there were no alternatives. If someone wants the nostalgia of watching those tube filaments glow orange on a cold winter night, fine, but building a tube CD player now is, at the least, eccentric if not nutty.
I think it was California Audio Labs had a hybrid CD player back in the late '80s and the tubes were visible through a little plexiglas window on the front panel, which was "cool" (actually, they were hot!).
Regards,
