Having said that, I do find slates 1176's a little 'heavy handed' and quite colored compared to UADs and my ears do prefer UAD's sound.
Now I am no electrical engineer, nor do I have a real 1176 to test, nor I am sure if this even matters, but that's what I get from a sine wave test! Do the same with a slate black or vintage blue 76 and the output saturates, dare I say (too?) hyped! Then boost the output, you will notice that the harmonics will increase in amplitude proportionally, thus pointing to a completely clean output stage. you'll see it start to add all kinds of nice harmonics.
I kinda agree with Slate on this one Load up a 1kHz Sine wave and an analyzer and boost the input of a UAD 1176.
