looking for a warm ss amp....

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.

Gunbei-
do you think that the mccormack dna 0.5 or dna 1 have enough power to drive the paradigm studio 60 speakers? i am finding that the denon 3802's 110wpc isn't enough to make this speakers sing. i like to listen to my music loud. and i will use the system for movies as well just not as much so i will need something to do dolby digital, etc. i was hoping to use the denon for that but it sounds like from the above posts that the denon's preamp section will still keep me from what i am looking for.