Tube preamp for techno and other bass-heavy music?

I owned a BAT VK-30 tubed preamp and home demoed a few others thanks to great dealers nearby. I always felt the best part of the electronica genre was missing-the leading edge of bass transients. When I went back to a SS preamp BAT-VK-40, and then my standby Rotel RC-1090 my wife asked how it was working out and my answer was "bass is back!" The tubed preamps did lots of other things well but ultimately for me using a SS preamp was the most satisfying overall sound. Crystal Method, Underworld, Aphex Twin, etc just didn't have the impact with the tubes. If I had two hifi rooms I would have tubes in one and SS in the other. The tubed room would be the pinky-up wine, tea, classical, jazz, and sophistication room. The SS room would be coffee, beer, tequila, rock and electronica belching out loud room. Right now it's all happily coexisting.

I'd say my target budget is around $1500, and I definitely want to stay below $2k.

For me, part of the experience with this kind of music is being able to feel the music, which you can definitely do with SS equipment even if your system isn't running hot in the low end of the frequency domain. If I can't get this from a tubed preamp in my price range, I'll have to go with SS.

I would look for a used BAT preamp. I've heard many different tube preamps and IMHO BAT offers not just the best bass performance in a tube preamp, but one of the best bass performaces from any type of preamp period, tube or solid state. You should be able to get a VK-3iX in your price range.

Cheers,
John

Your question is of interest to me as well.

I 2nd the BAT.