looking for a warm ss amp....

Fishcall- I used to have a B&K EX-140 (the early dual-mono version of their popular ST-140). I did an A/B to the ST140 at the shop I bought it from (Singer in NYC) and prefered the dual-mono by a slight edge for overall detail. The ST140 was VERY similar though. It was indeed very warm sounding and I did enjoy it. ST140's are easy to find and relatively inexpensive. All that said, if you are looking for "warm" why not got straight to the epicenter of warmth; get a tube amp. Lets see, you have $500-800 for the amp and another 500 for a pre? That's up to $1300. At that price you could buy yourself a great little integrated tube amp like a Jolida 502B putting out 60 watts of sit-by-the-fire warmth which should be plenty to drive most speakers. Heck your Studio 40's are 91db efficient...you could drive those to very satisfying volume with a Jolida 302B or an Audiomat Arpege! Any of these would top anything I've heard in SS at that price range for all around musical listening pleasure. If you have to stick to SS I think Plinius also makes an integrated amp in that price range used, but I've never heard it...only heard tell that it has warmer sound to it.

Good luck.

Marco

My Meitner suggestions, particularly the STR 55, are well within your price range. Get a used Meitner PA6i preamp to go with it, it will be as warm as you could want, with the "plus" upgrade available at some point from John Wright when you have the funds. Of course, finding these pieces used is not that easy, but they do show up from time to time.

I'll restate what I said earlier.

Try to find a used McCormack DNA 0.5 or DNA1 for under $800. They come up for sale very often, and they are outstanding amps! Power, finesse and some warmth.

From what I can tell, you've said nothing about using this setup for home theater. If this will be used in a two channel system only, the best thing you can do is to dump the Denon. Any Denon! You can get a $10,000 amp and it won't sound good with the Denon ahead of it in the chain.

You've given a budget of $1000 to $1300 for a preamp and amp. For $400-$650 you can get an Audible Illusions L1 or 2D preamp, an Audio Research LS1 or LS7 preamp for $500-650. The McCormack DNA 0.5 or DNA1 solid state amps are in the $650-800 range.

Keep the Signal cables and don't worry about spending on anything more expensive. Going to biwire speaker cables at this time wasn't necessary, but since you have them. stand pat with them.

For now, keep it simple and affordable. Good luck!

I'm surprised nobody mentioned NAD. All NAD amps I've heard were on the warm side of neutral, and they have some good high-power power amps for around $500. For under $500 you could get a used one and if it doesn't solve your problem, resell it for little or no loss.
Perceived brightness can also be caused by a lack of power in the amp (particularly if the amp lacks current and the speakers have dips in the impedance curve at low frequencies) and the NAD power amps have current to spare.

I'm sorry you were lead astray over cables. IMHO there's far too much hype and hyperbole regarding cables. Cables can be the icing on the cake of a good system but will not rescue a fundamentally unbalanced system.

Fishcall... the Plinius integrated can be had used for what you have budgeted, esp. if you don't go for the mkII model. I would agree with Seandtaylor99 about NAD. I've been happy with the NAD equipment I've had in the past. Their new BEE series of integrateds is supposed to be very good.