I beg to differ. I had an opportunity to check out a seriously old ~1950 Fender amp once, because the owner said that it was distorting at medium volume levels. What I found was rather interesting. The input stage had the guitar pickup connected directly to the tube grid, with zero bias. This meant that even a half a volt of signal (common with a newer guitar, but not available from the early pickups) would send the input tube into conduction for part of each cycle, which would make a lot of distortion.
The later amplifiers have a slight negative bias on the inputs to keep the tube operating in its linear range with a larger signal level.
Also, ‘blowing a tube’ is highly unlikely. They’re glass and steel.
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