Pass X-250 and Tube Preamp

An inexpensive good tube preamp (true balanced, use XLR)that worked wonders for me was the Cary SLP-2002. Use 6CG7 gain tubes instead of the 6922's to reduce the gain to match the high gain output of the X250. I used to run this combo & liked it better than a Pass X2 pre w/the X250. There are many past threads on this subject you can reference too.

Get the 250 and then trade it in towards 250,5.Thats what i did.Cost -2000.

I posted on this a year or so ago. I owned the X-250 for a few years and compared a bunch of tube preamps to the X-1 preamp. Lamm LL2, Blue Circle B-3 MKII, ARC LS-25 MKII, Counterpoint SA-5000, Joule LA-150, BAT VK-30SE, and a few more that I cannot recall right now. That being said, they all worked just fine. I even tried a few passive preamps that also worked pretty well but there was a slight gain issue with these but not real bad unless you listen to music really really loud.

Happy Listening.

My preamp is not balanced. Does this change any of your opinions above?

A mate of mine has Herron tube pre amp with X350.5 running unbalalanced. No problems at all.