Electrostatic Speakers/SS amp - what tube preamp?

AE3 by Cary new/used still will be under your budget. Make sure that your poweramp input impedance is >=30k.

On Audiogon: Rogue 99 magnum for $1500 or Cary 88 for $1200 would be your best choices. If you're looking at an AE-3, from experience, the DJH version is a big step up.

Considering your use of a balanced DC coupled solid state amp with an input impedance of about 50 Ohms(?), I think the the well built, user friendly, flexible, balanced, low out put impedance, DC coupled, neutral sounding, Sonic Frontiers Line series make ideal candidates.

I will second the SF choice.The SFL-2 is much better than the SFL-1{not sure where Sig.version comes in}.Possibly,the terra Song SS-1 or Marsh P2000.Are you using digital or analog.Digital always sounded better using this amp than did my 46K analog set-up.You will want something with a little sparkle up-top.

I will third the SF recommendation.

Gilbert Yeung at Blue Circle loves Martin Logans, and uses a pair of Odessey and a pair of CLS (amount some other brands) to tweek and test his designs.

His pair of CLS are pink (a custom job just for him by Martin Logan as a joke).

So put his tube preamps on your list. The matching amp to his BC21 and BC21.1 preamps is a solid state amp (BC22). Many also use his BC3 preamp with either a BC22 or a BC26.

Just curious. Do the Blue Circles have a balanced option?

Unsound, I'm realy curious about 50Ohms...
If that is the case or near arround even SF can be an issue of compatibility. I might be wrong if SF is transformer-coupled like AN...?

Marakanetz, Why to you feel a 500 ohm out put pre would present a load problem for a 50K ohm input? This is a 100 to 1 ratio. As i recall the minimum is 10 to 1. I would expect that the best thing a user could do would be to ask the manufacturer of the pre amp (if it is not specified in the user manual, as mine was).

Nothing wrong with 50K, I was just wondering about 50Ohms as Unsound stated...???

Marakantetz, good catch. Thanks for keeping everything straight. It should have read as 50K Ohms. Sorry for the typo.