Tube Vs. SS Preamps

This week I replaced my c-j Classic 2SE with a Zesto Leto preamp and the difference was not subtle.    It was staggering.   Having that component in my system has cemented my belief all along that the preamp is the most important link in the chain.  Speakers ?   Not as much ,  putting the Zesto in place made it seem like I upgraded my speakers ..... incredible sounding piece of gear.   

I always find this TUBE vs SS discussion entertaining.....If not silly. After near 50 years as an audiophile and 40 years in the HiFi business, I've found there is as much musical difference among various SS and tube  amps and preamps as there is between SS products and tube products.......If there wasn't, there would be far fewer manufacturers and no need for reviews, magazines and forums such as this.

Mush more important, is the combination of devices......You can buy all the amps, preamps, DACs, streamers, turntables, cartridges and speakers you want. Buy the most expensive and highly rated products on the market, put them all together and in many, if not most cases, the total system will sound terrible. 

This is the VERY difficult part of Audiophilia......There are hundreds of thousands of combinations....And hitting one that works for you might be like hitting the Lottery.

But THAT'S what makes the hobby so much fun......It's the hunt!

Very true, even though many products measure perfectly they all sound different.  I have three preamps in front of me.   All pretty good , they have their own character and presentation of the. music.   

From personal experience these differences are a little more pronounced with tube gear .  My newest preamp doesn't really sound like anything but I'm getting more of everything if that makes sense....

What ever flavor you like I think the preamp is the most important link in the chain as it can often be the bottleneck of a great system.

I run VTA SP-13 preamp which runs an Aikido line stage.  It was intended to drive a high input impedance tube amp.  A Dynaco ST-70 had an imput impedance of 330k ohms.   But I run my preamp into a solid-state active crossover, which has an input impedance of only 10k ohms.  That was a major problem when I first got it.

I went back to the designer and told him about the input impedance I had to deal with and he immediately knew the problem and the fix.   The coupling caps on the preamp output were at .33 uf.  He sent me some 1.5 uf caps to add on, which fixed the problem.

After living with super low distortion SS products from Exposure, Benchmark, and Bel Canto, I actually find that tube gear leads to earlier onset of fatigue, even when the tube gear is of relatively low distortion.