Looking for warm tube preamp (should pair well with Pass power amp), budget $6000

This is a very interesting thread, and in fact, this thread hind a big question mark for us all. It is the pre we ask for.

For example, Audio research Ref 5se, some one try to swap it out and some one call it world class pre. So who is right? What content inside the pre? What we ask for the pre? 

I am here to send my 2 cents:

There are 2 most important fact of the pre. Go small or go large!

Go small, means go detail

There are a lot of sparkles on the recordings, with right pre you can hear very clearly, with another one, you almost can NOT hear it. Some one value this point,

I am the one who value small, you can call small sound.

Go Large, meaning very big 3D imagine, very spacious,  

The sound is very open, and sound becomes big.

The new one might be surprised and call it is the one who ask.

Audio Research Ref 5 se is go large definitely.

Does the pre can go small and go large both????

Seldom!!!!!

So who is who? Different people emphasis on different things.

They both right, they are searching the different kinds of things.

From this point of view, you will not convince the other people to choose what you choose.

People are just different.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I've heard some really good ARC amps and I had the total opposite reaction... Don't know what people see in ARC. I would stick to a 6sn7 preamp like Aric Audio, Supratek, or Cary. 

I’d pick up a used Cary SLP-05 preamp and then send it in to them for the Ultimate Upgrade.  Huge improvement over the stock unit.  smoother and cleaner with better low level resolution.  

@russ69  I lose track of time, but it seems like about a year and a half or so ago I saw Upscale Audio was selling a SLP98 with the upgrade.  Was that the one you bought?  I was looking at that one with interest, especially because I think it had a phono stage(?), & I've kind of had vynyl on my bucket list (I don't think I am going to achieve that one, however) but I did note it didn't have balanced ins & outs & since I paid what I considered (at the time) a bundle for my balanced Kimber Silver Streaks, I guess that may have been my excuse not to buy something I couldn't afford.

I actually got my SLP05 from Cary's preowned page.  I justified also getting The Ultimate Upgrade because then I got free shipping.  That kind of logic is part of why I will not be a wealthy man when I die. 

Although I said that I do not feel the same warmth from my '05 as I do from my '90, I did not mean that was necessarily a bad thing.  I won't call anything "natural" sounding anymore, because I don't know what "natural" is supposed to sound like.  I guess, ideally, maybe I would like to hear what they hear inside the recording studio?  While I enjoyed what I felt was a "warm" sound from my 12au7 SLP90, what I get from my 6sn7 SLP90 is great resolution & detail (which I suppose is what "imaging" is) and a larger sound stage (within my small listening room).   Not that the SLP90 doesn't reproduce detail & imaging, just not nearly as well & to the extent that my '05 does.  I suspect that is something that your 6SN7 SLP98 does as well.

I lack the Golden Ear & the vocabulary to write about this subject, but if anything, I would describe the sound I have with the SLP05 now in the system as being rather "liquid."  Which at one time I think I might have also said about my SLP90, just a warmer "liquid" and not as much of it.

If you are interested in playing vinyl, Atma-Sphere MP-3 is best in your price.

Not exactly warm but accurate is more desirable. True balanced means pricey IC are not needed. I use $50 Mogami.

The built in phono stage is as good or better than an outboard stage surely more than $6K. And it is big advantage not to have another pricey IC.