From tubes to solid state

It doesn't matter whether the device, is thermionic, or silicon. What matters, is the enjoyment, it brings to you, when you listen. If conveinience, is the priority, then solid state, is definitely more conveinent. If sonics, is the priority, then decide, which sounds the best, TO YOU.

I built my system around a tubed pre-amp and big solid state amp, then tried a Stereophile Class A tube amp for 30 days. It was "nice", but when I went back to my SS amp, I said WOW. The SS amp was much quicker, more dynamic, and definitely had much better bass control, so PRT was much, much better with the SS amp.

That said, I'll be the first to admit that I had built, wired, and tweaked for the SS amp. If I were to go to a tube amp full time, I'm sure I'd make different wire and tweak choices. Personally though, I'm pretty sold on the tube pre-amp w/ SS amp approach. Cheers. Craig

C'mon, Craig, don't leave us hanging here! What were the two amps, the speakers, and the cable? You know you really want to tell!

The problem with tubes is the tubes! Fifteen years ago I went wild on an ARC SP6 and had it on two chassis and voiced the thing around Sylvania ladder plate/rectangular Getter 12AX7s and Brimar 6DJ8s.....It was a wonderful unit, but the only thing stock was the circuit board.....I had enough tubes to just get into trouble and had folks searching all over the place for the Sylvanias and only found a couple more at that time.....I had to sell the unit and bought an SP-11 and that stayed stock for almost three weeks before it was rewired and recapped....I sold it in a year or so and keep my hopped up ARC SP3A-1 in the garage for comparisons and have gone all solid state.....The point is it is hard to find good NOS tubes and lots of folks would go SS just to forget the hassles of buying good tubes....

I switched from the CJ55 to the Krell KSA 100s a year ago. The CJ was a nice amp but the Krell is clearly superior. On Roger Waters Amused to death thru my theta CD system, the CJ would place things from FR to rear left but they wouldnt flow from FR-RL, the Krell would make the music flow accross the room. With Vinyl the SS was vastly superior because of a much lower noise floor. Analog with SS is a major plus. CD with SS (how can I put This) NAH! the warmth of most tube amps is a real plus for digital sound.
The Krell just allows me to use any speaker, which is a benifit also