Combination McIntosh tube amp with SS preamp?

I am going to offer a slightly different suggestion. I would go with a Mac MC250 power amp. Get it upgraded by Terry DeWick and use that. It sounds very much like a 275 tube amp as it was designed to do so as one of McIntosh's first ss power amps and it has the important autoformers. There is qualitative and quantitative research on the web demonstrating this.I have one and compared it side by side with a 275...it was very close but actually had better bass, was also quite warm and very tubelike AND ran cooler. (I live in Hawaii and that was a consideration.) You can probably get one and upgrade it for $1000 finished. They even come up on Agon every so often.

Don't know how much this will help you since most of my gear is of fairly old vintage. I have a SS Mark Levinson ML-1 preamp controlling a rebuilt Mac 240 tube amp driving a pair of mid seventies Klipschorns. The sound is very clean and dynamic and I love looking at the tubes glowing at night, kind of like watching a fire on a cold winter night. Macs have always been known for their excellent output transformers. If you are buying new, maybe you could borrow a 275 from a dealer to see how you like it.

thanks a lot for the input, I already brought Classe CP-800 preamp, need to decide to buy the Classe CA2200 or CA2300 SS power amp or McIntosh Tube power amp instead. will power up B&W Signature Diamond Speaker.

thanks again!

I have a Prima Luna tube power amp with a Musical Fidelity PRE CD 24 solid state preamp/ cd player. I have had this combination in use for 8 or 9 years now. Not as powerful as having it the other way around, but the sound is very sweet sounding. No desire to change anything around.

Rich

I've gone the other direction with great results - solid state CODA amplifier and Audio Note L3 tube preamplifier.