Tube Amp,Solid State Preamp.

I run tube amps with a SS preamp....I love it. Of course 16 300B's and 8 6sn7's is more than enough tubes to deal with. The plusses are I leave the preamp on continualy and I think the SS preamp balances with the 300B tubes nicely. look for a nicely tranparent SS preamp....just one less headache...

I use a tube amp with solid state preamp as well. As Newbee said I actually prefer a passive preamp in front of the tube amp. Right now I alternate a LightSpeed passive attenuator and JRDG Capri with my VAC Auricle Musicblocs. Both are great combinations and preferable to the tube preamp and solid state amp set ups I've had.

I run the Ayre KX-R with a pair of Nagra VPA's, and very happy with the results.

I do it the other way, most of the headache of tubes is in the output tubes. When I was using a custom hybrid amp it had a tube front end and mosfet outputs. I now use a couple of tube pre amps along with transistor and hybrid ones. They all sound different, all good. Go for the sound you like best, if you use good components you can't go wrong either way.

I need to get to the bottom of this, but on the webpage for my Usher 6381's it says "goes better with SS amps". I assume, perhaps, that it's because their rating (87db/8ohm) isn't the easiest to drive (but not THAT hard, I would think??). Still, it's a curious thing to note. I've been curious about tube amps but have always stuck with SS partly due to this suggestion.

I have found that my current amp, which is based on the NS LM3886 chipset, is a musical SS amp with great bass.