The ups and downs of tube vs. SS...

Solid State vs Tubes. What about Solid state 'with' tubes?

By that, I mean hybrid amps, of which there are a few out there and I am in the middle of building one myself; it's sounding very nice.

The idea of a hybrid is to use tubes to amplify the small-signal voltage (phono and pre amp) and use transistors (in my case, Mosfets), to provide the current to drive the speakers (power amp).

The attraction of a solid state power amp is that is much more efficient and uses less electrical energy (juice!) for a given power output than tubes. The whole thing is more compact, cooler, requires less maintainance than a tube power amp and you have a much wider choice of speakers because tube power amps tend to only work their best with very sensitive speakers.

My phono and pre-amp both have 2 12AX7 tubes and 1 12AU7 tube in each. The 12AX7s provide gain and the 12AU7s work as buffers to match impedence with the following stages. I'm using some enhancement mosfets in class A mode as a gain driver in the power amp, followed by lateral mosfets working in AB mode (push pull). Some might sneer at AB push-pull but the crossover distortion is practically nill with these kinds of transistors so there's little reason to overlook them.

Anyway, have fun discovering your sound and look at some of the hybrids out there.

For the Record a great solid state amp with a tube preamp is what the majority to for you get the speed dynamic slam and better leading edge image focus
The tubes gives you that 3 dimensional depth and soundstaging that solid state can't quite match .   That being said I have just rebuilt a Canary push pull 24wpc quad 300b tube amplifier  that does music in a more live 3D presentation. Then ha solid state amp.
300b tubes one of the most Linear ever made  and only draw back is need a speaker in the 93db + range or better to excel.  

I’ve found that yes, hybrids are ok in pre-amps and phonos,
but you get the worst of both in amps
 That said, of  the twenty or so tube pre-amps that have passed through my hands
in the last 50 years , the one’s with tube rectifiers were better .

@schubert does that include ‘in line’ tube rectifiers between source and amp? For the main rig, I plan on a ‘tube sounding’ amp, and trying to figure out a tube system for my office. My budget for my main amp is around 10k, and for my office rig, around 5-7.....
jtweed

I love the sound of tubes. I ran tube amps of various configurations with either a Sonic Frontiers or Melos hybrid tube preamp for over 25 years in my main system. About a year ago I bought a pair of single ended solid state Valvet mono blocks. Since then I also purchased audio alchemy's latest preamp with it's optional power supply. I bought it initially as a dac but it really sounds great with the Valvet monos so it's replaced the melos preamp for the time being. Very surprising to me but, I'm not ready to sell the tube equipment yet... The Valvet amps sound very similar to the SE 6550 amp that was in the system prior. The difference is the 6550 (or KT88's) are a little (and I mean very little) fluid in the mids than the Valvets. The Valvets on the other hand have removed the distortion that I didn't realize was there to the extent it was with the SE amp. I'm not ready to say one is better than the other.