tube preamp w/ solid state amp

I've used tube preamps with solid state amps for several years now. I was carefull about turn-on and turn-off sequence at first, but found three of my preamps could be turned on and off while leaving the amp on with no ill effects. They were a BAT VK-31SE, Kora Eclipse, and Audio Research Reference TWO mk II. With the Audio Research preamp I do mute it before I turn it off. The Kora had a built in "warm-up while muted" turn-on sequence. I left the BAT in standby mode so when you turned it on it had a short warm-up delay and then was ready to go. I would think the amp you partner it with could make a diffence in the behavior, also.

I have done this for 15yrs now. The two things you need to be concerned with are; some tube preamps output impedance are high and or are high at the freq. extremes. If you match that with a SS amp with a low input imp. it will cause the amps freq. output to deviate. Second it is good practice to mute your tube pre, then turn off the amp, then the tube pre.

I ran a Conrad Johnson pv10a pre along with a Classe DR-9amp with very good effect with excellent sound while it all ran a pair of Sound dynamics300ti,MGIII,and numorous small british speakers.

The general rule of thumb is the input impedance of the amp should be at least 10x greater than the output impedance of the preamplifier - this is almost never an issue when using a tube amp which genrally, but not always, 100kohm input impedance. Generally only a consideration with 10Kohm amps (some Pass amps for example), but it is said that the greater the differential the better. Ofcourse, theory ain't worth a darn compared to trying it out and "specs" can be misleading and don't always tell the full story.

I am using a McCormack DNA-125 and Manley Shrimp with no problems. Talked w/Steve McCormack prior to buying the Shrimp and he said there would be no problem mating the two but for the sensitive volume attenuator on the Manley which only allows me to turn up the pre to about twelve o'clock.