Pass X-250 and Tube Preamp

I had anX250, it sounded great with a ML No. 26 preamp BALANCED mode.

YOu can also try a First Sound preamp, it should work nicely.

No not an issue the balanced cables offered a slightly blacker background and slightly better details but that could also be the cable design.

Happy Listening.

A mate of mine has Herron tube pre amp with X350.5 running unbalalanced. No problems at all.

My preamp is not balanced. Does this change any of your opinions above?

I posted on this a year or so ago. I owned the X-250 for a few years and compared a bunch of tube preamps to the X-1 preamp. Lamm LL2, Blue Circle B-3 MKII, ARC LS-25 MKII, Counterpoint SA-5000, Joule LA-150, BAT VK-30SE, and a few more that I cannot recall right now. That being said, they all worked just fine. I even tried a few passive preamps that also worked pretty well but there was a slight gain issue with these but not real bad unless you listen to music really really loud.

Happy Listening.

Get the 250 and then trade it in towards 250,5.Thats what i did.Cost -2000.

An inexpensive good tube preamp (true balanced, use XLR)that worked wonders for me was the Cary SLP-2002. Use 6CG7 gain tubes instead of the 6922's to reduce the gain to match the high gain output of the X250. I used to run this combo & liked it better than a Pass X2 pre w/the X250. There are many past threads on this subject you can reference too.

Try to find a tube preamp with balanced outs.

I've never liked my speakers (thiel 2.3) with tubes. I currently loving and enjoying my pass labs x-350 and x-2 the synergy and musicality is awesome.

dave

You can increase your odds of success* by keeping the interconnect cable short; 2m or less would be good. The lower the output impedance -- closer to 100 ohm than 500 ohm -- the better your chances are.

* avoiding loss of dynamics, truncation of frequency extremes, and loss of immediacy.

Best of luck,
Joe

I'm very happy with Pass X-250 and ARC LS15 for the past year.

I'm running a McCormack DNA-500 (10kohm input Z) with a Dehavilland UltraVerve (600 ohm output Z), and the combination is terrific.

The impedances you are dealing with are probably in the same ballpark. If you stick to the 10 to 1 rule, i.e. the amp'z input Z should be at or greater than 10x the output Z of the preamp, you should be ok.