Make sure tube pins are cleaned and tubes of high quality .vintage Matched pair New old stock are best lowest distortion. If that doesnot lower noise to not be audible unless ear us up to the speaker Then your preamp either have problems needing to be fixed or is of Lesser quality and poorly designed. My tube amp is Trans former based and Very quiet. with tube preamps quality is even more important then with solid state ,but when done correctly the soundstaging and 3 dimension realism aspects it brings no Solid state preamp cannot quite match.