Using a tube amp with a Solid State preamp

I know of one person who does this successfully. Bill Thalmann at Music Technology uses a Conrad Johnson Motif MC-10 solid state preamp with a Conrad Johnson Premier tube amp. The MC-10 is similar to the Conrad Johnson PFR. Bill is a former engineer at Conrad Johnson. You may be able to ask Bill yourself. He can be found at www.musictechnology.com

I'm reaching back into my memory here, and I may have this wrong, perhaps an engineer can help, but many solid state preamps have comparatively low output impedances, while tube amps have very high input impedances. Normally you would want the output impedance to be higher than the input impedance. This may not make a difference with short cable runs, but with longer ones I recall reading you could lose some of the high frequencies. I like Sugarbrie's suggestion to ask Bill Thalmann.

I prefer a tube preamp with solid state amp if I am not going all tube.

you won't have a problem with impedences using a ss pre amp. you want the pre-amp output impedence to be no greater than 1/10th of the imput impedence of the amp. most ss preamps have output impedences of l ohm or less (whereas tube preamps typically have high output impedences anywhere from 500 to 3500 ohm, more or less, which require high imput impedence in the amp. tube amps typically have high impedences and will match well with eith ss or tube preamps. the same cannot be said for matching tube preamps with ss amps - thats where the trouble can be. Relax about the electrical match. However it would seem to me, sonically speaking, that you would have a much better realization of the benefits of a tube amp by using a tube preamp to go with it.

What you want to look for is an amp with a high input impedance(say, 35k ohms or higher). You will want as low
an output impedance on your pre-amp as possible. The reason for this has to do with transferring power, buffering, etc.

If you mix, most people I know will use a tube preamp and solid state power amp.

As far as what you might gain or lose with this setup, not much.