Receiver for pre/pro?

One more question on this subject. If you take a rather warm sounding receiver like NAD or H/K and match it with a brighter amp like a Adcom or maybe Acurus-Aragon, will amp's sound take over and you lose the warmth?

Well in my opinion--you wouldn't do this unless you had an amp you knew was much better,--in the first place. If you're just experimenting with something you already have,that is one thing.---I do again want to state the importance of the center speaker/ amp quality.There are so many less than stellar center speakers out there.

The reason I asked was that I have a 50 watts into multi channel H/K 230 and would like to boost at least the front three channels to about 80-125 watts. Maybe a used B&K. But if the H/K's warm sound wouldnt dramaticly change, something like the Acurus three channel amp that resells for a decent price used looks promising.
I have an very nice Ohm Acoustics center channel so I have that base covered.

I'm currently using a Rotel 1055 receiver as a pre/pro with Parasound Halo outboard amps. This is a stop-gap set-up while I finalize my pre/pro options. For HT, I noticed more dynamic and focused sound. Tighter bass and an overall more enveloping experience. For 2-channel the difference was even more pronounced with a clarity and soundstaging which brought new life to music.

Jer, it is pretty hard to have a warm-sounding receiver without a warm-sounding power amp section. Pre-amps tend to be more neutral than power amps. So, if you bypass the power amp section, it is a crap shoot as to what the tonal quality of the pre-amp section is. My bet is it would be more neutral than the receiver as a whole. Adding a bright-sounding power amp will probably result in an overall bright sound.

My recommendation is to get as neutral-sounding of a power amp as possible. You will probably own it longer than the receiver and a neutral amp will always be the easiest to integrate into another system.