Getting started w/ tube equipment

suggest an integrated and that you avoid chinese made brands. go for a push pull design of around 50 watts a side...that way you have many speaker choices except electrostats. look for a tube design that doesn't have a tube "forest" the less tubes you have the easier to maintain although mainstream tubes are being manufactured and not too expensive. some quality brands are American: Audio Research, Conrad-Johnson and Cary. Generally speaking you get a 3D soundstage and tonal purity that are tough for SS to present unless you spend some big money and then you still get a SS sound.

I can't point you to a primer on tubes. A good way to start learning would be to read reviews of tube amps, preamps and integrateds, and do searches here and at Audio Asylum for topics of interest.

Tubes require a little more attention than solid state but the amount varies from very little to a lot.

IMHO, a good choice for your first tube component is a PrimaLuna Prologue II or Dialogue II integrated amp.

These integrateds are very well built and have many great reviews.

In the preamp section they use 12AX7 and 12AU7 tubes. These are among the most common small signal tubes and there is a great variety of them that you can "roll" (change) to tune the sound of your integrated.

For the power tube section they have adaptive autobias. Biasing tubes is probably the hardest aspect of tubes for a newcomer to get comfortable with.

PrimaLuna does it for you continuously so you never have to bias, you don't need matched tubes and the tubes are run in their sweet spot so they last longer. In a pinch you can even run different tube types (KT88s with KT66s for instance).

Also the PrimaLunas are built so that they can use a variety of power tubes. You can read about this in the reviews.

So that's why I think the PrimaLunas are a good place to start. Reselling shouldn't be a problem if you find you don't like the PrimaLunas or tubes in general.

Good Luck and have fun!

Assuming that your speakers are compatible with tube amps, and many are not, I would start with something both reliable and easy to play with.

Depending on your expectations, getting good sounding tube based audio systems can be seen as a black art. Because of the ability to simply change tube brands/types to get a different tone you have unlocked not only the possibility to get the sound you want without continually changing amps/pre-amps/sources, etc, to do so, but unfortunately, a Pandora's box if you are too ambitious in the beginning. You must also have or develope a frame of reference for the sound quality you are seeking. I would NOT start out with tubed separates even though they may have greater potential in the long run.

Personally, if they were compatible with my speakers, I would start out with an integrated unit. You won't loose that much quality in comparison with separates (more flexibility, potential improvement in sonic quality, build quality, in system building, but also with all of the added interface issues and costs).

A Primaluna integrated would be a good place to begin. They are very reliable, very easy to maintain, very easy to change tubes, not too expensive, and very easy to resell if or when you want to move on. Don't get caught up in that anti-Chinese stuff. The are great place to START.

If all you want to do is buy good plug and play tubed stuff this is a good place to start and probably finish.

Hope that helps a tad, at least.

Need more info on your system, tastes and budget before an informed answer can be given.

What speakers do you have?
What amp/preamp do you currently have?
What size room?
How loud do you listen to your music?
What kind of music do you listen to?
How important is bass to you?
What musical traits are you looking for?
Is this a dedicated 2 channel system or will you also use this for home theater?
What source do you use?
What is your budget?

I will say that the tube maintenance issue is generally overblown and should not deter the majority of interested people from checking out tube gear.

Tube gear does span the spectrum from tonally colored to incredibly transparent and everything in between.

Get back to us with some of the above and I think the tube equipment afficianados on the board should be able to provide some good recommendations.