Given my passion in tube based Preamps, I've observed we get consistently good reports by respected contributors here that Ear, Shindo, Allnic, Backert, Vac, VTL, Aethetix, Hovland, and ARC are terrific choices.
Personally I’ve got a soft spot for 6SN7 based Preamps because the relative abundance of good tubes with a wide sonic palate that offer great tube rolling possibility for system tuning - names like like deHavilland, Atmo-Sphere, Wyeteck, Supratek, MFA Lumi, ASL Flora, Sachs and TRL Dude come to mind. I find there is a little more meat on the bones on these octal tubes. Tung Sol, RCA, and Sylvania are solid choices.
By reputation they should be great music makers and can be had used for <10k all the way down to 1.5k. As usually it about synergy and the listeners own listening priorities.
Personally I’ve got a soft spot for 6SN7 based Preamps because the relative abundance of good tubes with a wide sonic palate that offer great tube rolling possibility for system tuning - names like like deHavilland, Atmo-Sphere, Wyeteck, Supratek, MFA Lumi, ASL Flora, Sachs and TRL Dude come to mind. I find there is a little more meat on the bones on these octal tubes. Tung Sol, RCA, and Sylvania are solid choices.
By reputation they should be great music makers and can be had used for <10k all the way down to 1.5k. As usually it about synergy and the listeners own listening priorities.