Detlof: A friend who also sold me that mother lode of Gold Lion KT88s. He's a contractor, and every now and then he's between jobs and lets a few of his stash go to me. In this case, I had to trade some Tele and Siemens Ccas to get them; if I ever can fix my phono stage in the Jadis, I'll have to go searching for more Ccas, I guess, although the Lamm works incredibly well together with the 80's line stage. I am very surprised at the improvements I've heard since I put the 802S and 803S tubes into the amps and preamp; had very good Tele 12AX and AU7s in there before and these are a clear level better. No wonder they're so sought after.
In answer to Glen's question, in addition to the advice given above, some preamps have auto-muting circuits that will not let the signal through till the unit has stabilized (for example, 6 minutes in my Jadis, another reason I don't like to turn it off!); that gives the tubes time to stabilize and get to operating temperature. I tend to agree with Sean's and Detlof's advice--I leave my Jadis amps in standby to warm up a good 5 minutes to an hour before I listen seriously, but I can and do pass signal at a very low volume level after a few minutes while they're warming up and use it as background music (or, if it's very simple and quiet music, I can listen seriously to it, even at the 1-2 watts the Jadis put out in standby).
In answer to Glen's question, in addition to the advice given above, some preamps have auto-muting circuits that will not let the signal through till the unit has stabilized (for example, 6 minutes in my Jadis, another reason I don't like to turn it off!); that gives the tubes time to stabilize and get to operating temperature. I tend to agree with Sean's and Detlof's advice--I leave my Jadis amps in standby to warm up a good 5 minutes to an hour before I listen seriously, but I can and do pass signal at a very low volume level after a few minutes while they're warming up and use it as background music (or, if it's very simple and quiet music, I can listen seriously to it, even at the 1-2 watts the Jadis put out in standby).