jolida 202 or 302?

Jayctoy, was it a hybrid you heard (tube preamp with a ss power amp)? Maybe the 1501 or 1703/4? Definitely try the 202 and 302. I listened to the 1501 ($650-750 new) and thought it was a nice amp, but the all tube 302 was just qualitatively different. Superior, more natural. I wanted to like the 1501 (more power and a remote), but the choice was obvious after hearing both.

Thanks. I'll get a chance to do a head to head of the stock 302 and 202 next week. I've been inclined to follow Crazy4blues advice and get the 202 spend the extra money on tubes, etc (in part, I admit, because that extra $ is easiler to slip by without spousal approval. She already thinks I'm nuts for what I want to spend on the 202. A character in a book I read said that the greatest blow to male independence was the disappearance of separate bank accounts.)

Yes, my speakers are inefficient (maybe around 86 - they're Tangent RS4s). But I have auditioned the 302 and the modified 202 with them, and I've not heard them sound so good before. So I'm sold on the tubes. It's true that I couldn't really crank the volume, but I don't do that much in any case. I figure I rather sacrifice the ability to crank as high as I sometimes (but not often) like in order to get that sound I heard from the Jolida. I did THINK I might have detected more headroom with the 302 over the 202, but wasn't sure why it should be noticible with only a 10W difference. (Besides, I auditioned a 40W Arcam that seemed to have no trouble with these speakers at the levels I listen to, so I figured I must just have been hearing what I expected to hear in power difference between the 302 and 202.) Hence my thread.

So, Trelja, your response begins to explain to me why I might not have been imagining things when I thought I detected more headroom with the 302. Right? It's not simply a matter of wattage (or the way it's measured, anyway)?

One more thing... Being new to tubes, I have lots of questions. How much difference could tubes make in making the 202 (or 302, for that matter) sound more powerful? For example, KT88s?