SS vs Tube Preamps

I had one (solid state preamp) hooked to my tube amps a couple months ago...sounded great. I was not in the market and only giving my opinion to someone regarding the preamp.

The system still sounded like tubes BTW.

Dave

Either way works I use a tube pre with a ss amp with great results. Impedence matching is important but beyond that no issues.

Chuck

I've had all combinations of SS/tube preamp/amp. I think in many ways my favorite was SS pre and tube amp. Try it different ways and choose whichever sounds best to your ears.

Good luck,

Michael

Gsm, FWIW, my basic philosophy of system composition is this:

1.) Use excellent SS gear up front for precision and transparency. Besides, tube preamps and tube phono preamps always produce some tube hiss. And unfortunately, electrostats or other highly revealing speaker systems, will reproduce this very well.

2.) Use an excellent tube power amp(s) to enjoy the harmonics, timbre, and decay that even the best SS amps never quite manage to provide. And unlike tube front-end stuff, good tube amps are just as quiet as SS amps (no tube hiss.).

The only problem with tube amplification is bass control. There's no economic advantage IMO for buying a humongous tube amp to drive either a hybrid electrostat (with woofers but no built-in bass amp) or any full range speaker with full low bass capability. The damping factor to the woofers will still be limited. Therefore, I think it better to spend the monetary difference (between a small and large tube amp) to biamp instead, with a mid-priced SS amp for the bass (like a Bryston) and use an excellent (but modest power) tube amp for the mids and highs, which is where tubes work the most magic. And as Dave indicated, the system will "still sound like tubes."

Anyway that's my two cents ;--)
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Good post above by Nsgarch, to which I would only add it is usually much less expensive to retube a tubed preamp than a power amp, and the tubed preamp generally gives off much less heat. Also, the bass control issue extends to tubed preamps as well as power amps, with a few exceptions, although even the really good ones do not equal the bass control and definition of the best SS preamps. However, it is very hard to equal the dimensionality and harmonics of a tube amp or preamp when using SS.