Are my amp and preamp mismatched?

I always thought you could not go wrong with both from same mtg. until I owned a McCormack RLD 1 along with a DNA 125 amp.   It was a good sounding combo, perhaps better than my previous Mc C15 driving the 125,  but it just didn't blow me away.  I used the RLD for a few years and then bought a c-j Classic 2SE.   The RLD, was the bottleneck of my system all along.....go figure.    I almost replaced my speakers and fortunately I didn't.....   That preamp made it sound  like I had better speakers, the difference was that pronounced. 

@greycloud, I think you have a good match with your preamp and amp, especially since you are experiencing good low-end performance.

This amp is an early Pass design and has a single-ended input stage as opposed to fully balanced so I think using your preamp is fine. The conversion to a balanced signal is performed at the gain stage which is after the input.
I read the white paper and dont see a problem as long as there is an impedance match. There may be some benefit in noise reduction by using balanced cables.

Someone more qualified in amp design could tell you if there would be a sonic benefit to using a balanced preamp.

you can not go wrong if you pick all components from the same manufacturer.

I believe back when the amp was introduced Nelson Pass intended that a solid state preamp, perhaps one of his designs, should be paired with the X-250. That may be why the impedance of 300 kOhms was recommended.

you can not go wrong if you pick all components from the same manufacturer.

Thank you for the reply. No clipping yet. The sound is solid, especially the bass. The music definitely has more presence than my previous tube amps.

How do you think using a balanced preamp would change things?

"The Pass has an Input Impedance of 22k ohms balanced"

This impedance rating is for a balanced signal and I believe your preamp is single ended. The input spec of the Pass for SE is 11 kOhms.
The calculation for impedance matching is 20. IMO, this would be the minimum needed for your preamp to drive the amp with no loss of dynamics at all frequencies. However, peaks and transients in the music have to be considered, but they are of such a short duration that clipping by the amp may not occur.
  The reason I use the impedance calculation result of 20 rather than 10 is to take into account transients and the impedance of low frequencies.

The X-250 is not a fully balanced differential amp, so it accepts a SE input and converts it to a balanced signal. 

So how does it sound? Ever notice any clipping? I'll bet the two components work well together.

I have read in another post that the Pass X-250 is best paired with a preamp with an output impedance less than 300....so I was second guessing my pairing. Thanks!

Its a 40:1 ratio which should be fine.