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Diving into the world of tubes...help needed!

Hi all,
I'm seriously considering diving into the world of vacuum tubes.  I currently have Focal Aria 906s which I adore...but may upgrade those in the future as well to a floor standing speaker.  For the beginning though, they will be my speakers.  Looking for opinions on the below amps/preamps, especially the pairing of the Emotiva pre with the EVO 100!

My choices have been narrowed down to:
  • PrimaLuna Prologue Classic Integrated Amp - would likely pair with a Schiit Loki to have tone control
  • PrimaLuna EVO 100 Power Amp - paired with EMOTIVA PT-100 preamp, would likely pair with Loki as well
  • Vincent SV-237MK Integrated Amp - needs nothing additional
Thanks in advance for your assistance :)
branden_8091
millercarbon's avatar
millercarbon
12,531 posts
 
Ditch tone control. Ditch separates. Add Raven integrated to the list.

You'll get far more for your audio dollar with integrated vs separates. Prima Luna is European based made in China. Good luck with that.

Raven is all American and with outstanding rep for customer service. 

Hard to go wrong with tubes, especially not at this level where they all outshine SS right across the board. Adding tone control just might do it though....
branden_8091 OP
60 posts
 
@millercarbon I like tone control for a lot of 'correcting' of recordings so that they sound good to me.  I know many will disagree, but eh, it is what it is.

Nearly CAD$4000 for their cheapest integrated is a little much for me. Nothing wrong with made in China if it's quality! Which apparently both the PrimaLunas have.
Customer service would be nice though.
atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
11,938 posts
 
The nice thing about separates is that you can often place your amps near the speakers, keeping your speaker cables short. Tube amps are more sensitive to speaker cables; keeping them short helps out with resolution. If you decide you want more power/resolution/etc. its not that hard to change out a preamp or amp, as opposed to an integrated setup.

The other advantage of separates is each bit of the system does not share the same power supply (which reduces distortion) and crosstalk is simply going to be lower. 
I'm with millercarbon about tone controls. I think you'll find that once the system has proper resolution and a musical nature that tone controls are no longer needed. One thing about tone controls- their introduction into the circuit will **always** increase noise, decrease resolution and bandwidth, introduce coloration and distortion. That's a thing you can count on. The reason is that tone controls require an active circuit to make up for the gain that they otherwise consume. Additionally even when the controls are set flat they often aren't really flat unless they are switched like Harmon Kardon did on their Citation 1 preamp. If the tone controls can be switched out that is helpful, but I've serviced a lot of amps where that switch was actually the problem- due to corrosion of the contacts, even on a newer piece.
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