Which pre-amp has been most thrilling match with a SS amp?

May I suggest the c-j 16LS. It's really quite stunning. In our system, heads and shoulders above the CAT or Joule. The other pairings, I can't speak to, but he Hovland may be a competitor.

Generally, I like the CAT, but unfortunately none of your choices will work well with all solid state amps or all tube preamps, synergy being preamps and amps being much more complicated than that! Ideally, it would be best to try each of your preamp choices in your home system and then choose the one you like best. Whether two products will have synergy with one another is usually quite unpredictable. Since you usually cannot test each preamp in your system, the rest is guesswork in coming up with your final decision.

We've had very good success with a CJ (PV-10) and a solid state (Clayton Audio S40) solid state amplifier. If you want the best of both worlds -the silky smoothness of tubes, and the power, quickness, and extremes of the frequency spectrum- a good tube pre combined with a good SS power amp does provide great sounds. Not too hard. Not too soft. Just right!