What's the best sounding SS or Tube linestage pre?

Adcom is always a good buy and price point. I owned a Levinson 38S - it was a fine preamp until I experienced the Mcintosh C42 - it is extremely natural sounding and versatile. It also has an 8 band eq which mostly stays in the defeat center mode but comes in handy on some cd's yes even my SACD's to adjust glare and not so well recorded selections. Nice to look at too/

There is Stan Warren's own personal hand made passive preamp for sale in the classifieds. If you don't know Stan, he was one of the founders of PS Audio (The S in PS is for Stan). Stan has made some nice preamps over the years under the PS Audio and Superphon namplates. He is asking $600. Stan is a genious, so I would assume this thing sounds really nice.

You could also consider a Creek OBH-10. It is basically a volume control, so it will be the same as running your CD player right into the amplifier. Can't get any cleaner than that. It has one input (just enough) and a remote. It lists for only $229. AudioAdvisor.com has a demo unit for sale for $169.

One of the best "value" tube preamps is the Conrad Johnson PV-10.

a very good purist type preamp is steve deckert's "zen triode" design (zt pre). dual volume controls and outboard power supply, not many concessions to ergonomics (only 2 inputs, no remote). it does allow switching between low and high gain, and different output capacitor couplings, so it's flexible as far as the kind of sound you can get.
i own one, as you can probably guess.
it is extremely transparent sounding. it is also unique in terms of both features and sound for the price (about $900 with a lifetime warranty).
www.decware.com
well if this sounds like an ad, i guess it is.
if you don't need much gain or switching, you can look into his passive design, which is $400.
The bottlehead preamps are excellent also and dirt cheap, if you are at all interested in building one yourself. www.bottlehead.com
the adcom is good but good the best tube designs are clearly better soundwise when it comes to adding gain to the signal (tho better, rare at the price level). by the way, the decware designs are not at all tubey sounding in the sense of warm, instead, they are totally neutral and minimalist, preserving fine detail in the signal.
good luck!

I will second Sugarbrie's comments on both Stan Warren and on the Conrad Johnson PV-10. I am continually amazed at how often there are PV-10's on this site for around $600. You can usually get one with phono for little or no extra money. The phono preamp alone is worth the $600.

PCS