Good post, Jason. When I did this stuff for a living, I got to repair/tweak/play through just about every kind of amp on the market. I also built up several prototype circuits of my own. I used to think something was wrong with me--"everyone" knows that cathode biased amps with no negative feedback are better, so why didn't I care for the way they responded to my playing? Time and time again, I found that I enjoyed playing more through amps with fixed bias and at least some amount of negative voltage feedback in the output stage. As time went on and I educated myself more deeply in circuit theory--and broke away from the pronouncements of the "gurus"--I began to understand that there are some very tangible reasons for my preference. Fixed bias amps compress the signal less, which is good or bad depending on your taste. Amps with negative feedback tend to stay "cleaner" up to the point of saturation, at which point the transistion is fairly abrupt. 

These are qualities that suit my own playing style perfectly. If my idea of perfect tone was Chicago blues circa 1953, then I'd most certainly prefer a cathode-biased amp with no -FB, with its attendant compression and more gradual transistion into audible distortion. But my style is different and therefore, I prefer a different type of amp.