Tube sound with no tubes

I would suggest taking a look at the Artemis LA-1. If changing tubes is that much of an issue you won't need to often with this pre. It uses 2 5687 dual triode tubes one for each channel and only heats 1 of the 2 triodes. Once the tube goes you swap channels and your good to go. The manufacturer calls it Cool-Swap Technology. You will get an easy 20,000 hrs on a set of tubes.

I know i wont get the exact sound out of ss preamp.Maybe i should have said a pre-amp with no edgy, analitical sound to it.I know there some great SS gear to be had and using a tube preamp for years I have gotten use to the sound.Some of the SS preamps I have heared sounded very sterile to me.My current preamp is a Sonic Frontiers Line-3/se.

another BIG tom evans fan. i went from a tube phono pre and pre to the tom evans groove+srx and vibe/pulse2. this solid state front runs through his amazing linear b monoblock tube amps. those 16 el84's fulfill all of my tube desire.

how much do you want to spend montana audio has a 12,000 dollar preamp that sounds sweet like tubes but has the slam of solid state. go to the web site and look

Spaz, if you want to avoid the stereotypical over analytical, edgy SS sound, I think you can do so easily with many of today's SS offerings. You would certainly be fine with a Pass pre. If you want an SS tube to sound like a tube pre, that is another thing altogether, and I think for the most part you can't do that; which doesn't mean you can't find some excellent sounding SS pres, they simply have a different signature compared with tubes.