Toobs + SS = x

Oops. Now what have I done? I like valve power amps because every solid state amp I have heard suffers from being either lifeless or some nasties in the upper mids. I have also heard some lovely tube preamps, yet prefer the Placette Pre to all of them. And so I find myself liking a ss pre and a valve power.

I am not saying the reverse is wrong - but I am saying that I reckon a certain popular wisdom is wrong. That is, get a big hunk of iron (alluminium) ss amp with low damping factor, and cure any cold/lifelessness with a warm tube preamp. Of course my experiences are limited - as is true for all of us.

I guess the experiences I have had lead me to the conclusion that an unmusical/hard/cold/grainy (choose one or more) ss amp, added to a warm mushy tube preamp does not so much add up to a neutral sound as give you the sonic equivalent of sweet and sour. Of course some people may like sweet and sour, but when it comes to audio I don't.

Furthermore there is a certain life to a great tube power amp (over a great ss power amp). If that life is absent in the power amp, preamps cannot cure it.

That's OK Ux4, and any comments made here will always be out of context - as Dekay indicates, what works in one context can never be assumed to be a universal rule. But if you take that view too far, we would be afraid to post any opinions at all here.

I am not against tube pres at all - just the notion of using a warm mushy one to "improve" things. This is all predicated on the fact that I have always found that ss power amps are a huge impediment to musical enjoyment. And I do not find that tube pres make them OK.

In fact if I used vinyl, I would be using a tube preamp now. (Sadly new vinyl supplies in NZ are almost impossible to get, meaning the way I like to keep sampling new music means vinyl is a dead option for me).