Thanks for asking.
As for the initial brute matter of needing more "juice" to push the speakers and make them sing, I can safely say that the 70 watt CJ tube power amp goes further than the 75 SS Linn amp. So that's a big dumb thumbs-up.
As for the matter of sound quality and increased musical experience, this is harder to answer. Definitely not a step down. But I do not have golden ears for hi-fi gear and am, I suppose, a slow-moving gestalt-listener rather than a quick-witted precision-listener. And going back a/b between amps is not my idea of fun for a Friday evening after the kids are in bed. And subjective bias is awful mighty when one splurges on a big heavy new piece of classic kit. And my better phono preamp is in the shop, so I'm making do with a Rega Fono.
That said, I think there was a new kind of presence to the music. To re-baptize the Premier 11a, I played Van Morrison Moondance (recent audiophile LP remastering from Mofi, I think) and first-pressing On the Beach by Neil Young. The sound reminded me (or the thought of the sound reminded me) of what I can hear from my tube amps for electric guitar and always missed from SS guitar amps. An ultra-dynamic snap and thwack utterly missing from the smooth Linn SS amp. That snap changed the timbral colorings of the snare drum, the hard-strummed guitar, and other instruments. And the music hovered before me in a new way. Or perhaps that's the hallucinatory power of subjective bias....
As for the initial brute matter of needing more "juice" to push the speakers and make them sing, I can safely say that the 70 watt CJ tube power amp goes further than the 75 SS Linn amp. So that's a big dumb thumbs-up.
As for the matter of sound quality and increased musical experience, this is harder to answer. Definitely not a step down. But I do not have golden ears for hi-fi gear and am, I suppose, a slow-moving gestalt-listener rather than a quick-witted precision-listener. And going back a/b between amps is not my idea of fun for a Friday evening after the kids are in bed. And subjective bias is awful mighty when one splurges on a big heavy new piece of classic kit. And my better phono preamp is in the shop, so I'm making do with a Rega Fono.
That said, I think there was a new kind of presence to the music. To re-baptize the Premier 11a, I played Van Morrison Moondance (recent audiophile LP remastering from Mofi, I think) and first-pressing On the Beach by Neil Young. The sound reminded me (or the thought of the sound reminded me) of what I can hear from my tube amps for electric guitar and always missed from SS guitar amps. An ultra-dynamic snap and thwack utterly missing from the smooth Linn SS amp. That snap changed the timbral colorings of the snare drum, the hard-strummed guitar, and other instruments. And the music hovered before me in a new way. Or perhaps that's the hallucinatory power of subjective bias....