I dunno if he preferred it through a valve amp. But I get your joke.
I’ve swapped necks on guitars and basses, and can hear and feel differences, but I wouldn’t call my experiments scientific.
My eighties Japanese Strat has a baseball bat neck, and it sounds good to me.
I dunno, I quite like the knobs. But then, I’ve got a Strat, so I’m used to them.
It’s five string basses I can’t get used to, they look wrong wrong wrong!
Stewart Ward, of Session amps fame, recounts how changing necks on a Telecaster (sorry guys) changed its tone significantly.
The stiffness of the necks, due to differing thicknesses, seemed to be the deciding factor, not body material.