I'm surprised to see so many people advocating a solid-state preamp with a tube amp - they are correct.
But as has been hinted at, few tube amps are able to adequately drive typical modern loudspeakers, which feature low impedances in the bass - only really expensive tube amps have the power supplies and output transformers required to get the job done.
As for solid-state preamps, the problem with the vast majority of them is that they sound "electronic". However, the really expensive ones have all of the best qualities of tube preamps - natural sound and timbres, excellent layering of space - but are far quieter, which is crucial at the preamplification stage, and can drive long runs of cables, which most tube preamps cannot.
The bottom line is that a solid-state preamp with a tube power amp is a superb way to go, but only if you have the means to play at a very high level - stated another way, a tube preamp with a solid-state amp is the way to go in my opinion, all things being equal, unless you have a lot of money to spend. A lot of people would like to think otherwise, but average solid-state preamps and average tube amps have fundamental problems that seriously compromise performance, and this is why the tube preamp + solid-state amp combination is popular.
But as has been hinted at, few tube amps are able to adequately drive typical modern loudspeakers, which feature low impedances in the bass - only really expensive tube amps have the power supplies and output transformers required to get the job done.
As for solid-state preamps, the problem with the vast majority of them is that they sound "electronic". However, the really expensive ones have all of the best qualities of tube preamps - natural sound and timbres, excellent layering of space - but are far quieter, which is crucial at the preamplification stage, and can drive long runs of cables, which most tube preamps cannot.
The bottom line is that a solid-state preamp with a tube power amp is a superb way to go, but only if you have the means to play at a very high level - stated another way, a tube preamp with a solid-state amp is the way to go in my opinion, all things being equal, unless you have a lot of money to spend. A lot of people would like to think otherwise, but average solid-state preamps and average tube amps have fundamental problems that seriously compromise performance, and this is why the tube preamp + solid-state amp combination is popular.