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There are a number of misconceptions here

First, just for the record, JA's comments above are spot on. I find it odd that they were not perfectly crystal clear to you.

OTLs are a kind of tube amp that has no output transformer. We've been making them for nearly 4 decades now and if they were unreliable we'd have gone out of business years ago.

However your comments about hysteresis and the like are not based on reality. In SETs if the transformer is part of the plate load hysteresis plays no role whatsoever.

The area where the transformer can be a concern as far as distortion goes is in a push pull design wherein the power tubes are biased close to class B operation. When the tubes shut off a spike can occur in the output transformer as the magnetic field collapses. However there really aren't any high end tube amplifiers biased anywhere near Class B (and even AB2 is super rare) so this is not likely to be the basis of your complaint.

More than likely you are concerned about the 2nd harmonic which many tube amps exhibit, which can cause a 'lushness' or 'warmth' to the sound. This is easily avoided even in a transformer coupled design by implementing fully differential balanced topology This BTW is how many transistor amps are designed). BTW, if transistor amplifiers employ single-ended circuits (and many of them did back in the 1960s and early 70s) they too will exhibit a 2nd harmonic as this is a topological issue and has nothing to do with tube or solid state.

You might want to ask yourself " if triodes are some of the most linear amplification known to man" (and they are) "how come tube amps have so much distortion?" The answer has everything to do with how feedback is or is not used and the complexity of the circuit. Tubes are often so linear that no feedback need be applied and the circuit can be quite simple.

But tube amps existed in the 1960s that had THD of only 0.05% at full power; better than any of the transistor amps of the ear and for some years since! So while you may have developed your opinion over years and decades, you might also want to consider that it is in fact opinion and not fact.

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