Always long for (upgraded) first love: Sonic Frontiers Line 3

Oh yeah that's right I forgot about this shop. Many thanks.

Perfect time for my dilemma: with the same amount of money, will I get a better sound quality and/or reliability from say less than 10 year-old tube preamp (putting memorabilia aside for a minute)? Although price is not very cheap for 20 year-old gear, it's not unreasonable either.

CAT appears to be in business still. I had extensively listened to both (sfl2 and CAT SL1 reference) although long time ago. Both lacked the characteristic of slow, fat, overly warm tube sound but maintained the glorious mid and upper octave with great sparkles. CAT has a legendary phono section. SF doesn't. Imo, bass was well controlled and deep with SF to my liking more than CAT. I read the review saying Line 3 is a significant step up from sfl2

Well, I agree that CAT has a clean look that goes along with its clean transparent sound. You can’t go wrong with one and I’d imagine that since they are still in business, it would not be difficult to replace the aging parts like capacitors of needed.
The phono is what makes this legendary though since you get a built in not-the-after-thought awesome phono and eliminating additional pair of IC.

I only wonder how do updated Line 3's sound quality compared to modern tube preamp since I have not listened to new tube preamp in years.

Well, Chris Johnson from Partsconnexion has Line 3 coming in and he offers for $2,500 with full inspection, testing and cleaning with replacement of all age related/sensitive materials and umbilical cord if worn out. With warranty to 1 year at this price, I decided to go for it.
With additonal $500, I can get 10 Siemens 6922 tubes, I might do that later.

It's like I want to spend a weekend ex-gf from years ago that got some augmentation before moving on to the young hot one...lol

I appreciate both of your comments as previous owners who underwent the upgrade path. I do love the sound that is neutral and details but I enjoy the sparkles and organic sound of tube. Line 3 is really for my fond memory of SFL-2/Krell KSA 150 combo twenty years ago. My current amp is musical fidelity KW550 integrated amp with RCA red base tube which sounds fine to me. I have been interested in BAT Sex as well. You guys probably save me from upgrading Line 3 which is going to cost a bit. 
I recently acquired a pair of single ended triode 300b/805 monoblock from a small company called TS Audio inThailand during my visit there. Although the finish is at best a nice DIY quality, the sound however is very nice, better than Cary 805 that I listened to so I figure Line 3 would be quite fun to play with this thing.