Sonic Frontiers to Conrad Johnson .

You kight try a c-j Premier 14, their 1st Premier-level preamp with RC. I believe they're c. 41500 but I could be wrong.
...RIGHT HERE!!!!!!!!!!!

http://cls.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/cls.pl?preatube&1115098120
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So I am curious... why so stuck on the speakers? I have never been a big fan of b&w... and while I own a lot of vintage gear (and appreciate their sins of omission) I think the Sonic Frontiers stuff is very musical... and not in the least cold (room playing a heavy factor here... never mind personal preference).

My advice would be to dump the b&w's. I also think things like digital eq and active biamping may generate a lot more benefit than changing pre/amp (then again, if you just want new gear... that is another topic :-).

Brainwater, no I'm not kidding!
And it's not a joke that SF Line 3 is clearer,faster,with better focus,more information,with more qiet signal and more revealing sound than CJ Premier preamp which is dark, mellow,with no neutrality.I'm sorry about that...
The warmer sound IMHO is not the point.
When you hear music from Line 3 the orchestra is excactly right there.When you hear from CJ, the orchestra is somewhere there...!!!
That's the point for me.

Athens , i really thought you were in fact kidding. Sorry. Its hard to tell in writing sometimes. Didnt mean to offend. I do agree with newbee in that the CJ gear i have had in my system was not warn and colored by any means . Those days have come and gone i believe and the musicality of top end CJ gear is second to none yet articulation of the musical notes is clean and accurate. I think the chain is a determining factor of course but i find quite frankly their new products inspiring. I had access to the Sonic Frontiers line stage a couple of months ago and it was as you said , clean and fast but did not remotely posess the soundstaging properties , decay nor musicality the CJ had in spades. Its just my singular experience and is to be taken as such.

It couldn't hurt trying to listen to some different speakers (?) I'm only suggesting this because usually people that love the big, warm, lush, sound have something like old Tannoy 15 inchers or similar crazy stuff.

Regarding the SF Line 1: I have a buddy who has a Line 1 in front of a Canary power amp and Audio Note speakers. Believe me he has incredible, musical, big and warm sound - but his sound isn't out of control warm. It still rocks extremely convincingly.

A Line 1 or Power 2 shouldn't prevent you from having big and warm if your speakers and source are right. Example, if you're going to use a Benchmark DAC you'd probably have issues getting big, warm, lush, to hell with accuracy sound. It wasn't designed for that.

Both of us + other of our buddies have heard different B&W Nautilus models hooked up in various tube-based systems and they have never sounded big and warm. Clean would describe them best (and hard on top too, at least to our ears).

Not trying to insult your speakers, but if they weren't designed to do big, warm, and lush, then any system that they're in will have issues doing big, warm and lush.