Personal amp evolution

I'm basically a conservative when it comes to this audiophile stuff - I don't like to spend much, change gear very often, consume a lot of power, or occupy a lot of space. I want to be able to play loudly, but not loud enough to cause audible sympathetic vibration in my listening enviroment. I do not aspire to ever own the "best there is". My concise (so far) amp evolution has been thus: NAD 2200, to Classe Seventy, to Conrad-Johnson MV-55, over a fifteen year period! (And I've kept the same Technics SL1200 turntable/arm over all that time!) Each move, FWIW, was up in price, down in power, and going from SS to tubes - not to mention better in sound. There will be another change soon, probably within the next year, as I am going to be moving to a bigger listening room. It will also be the result of my having slowly but steadily upgraded sources and cabling in the meantime. I am thinking about staying with tubes in the power amp, but with more watts, extension, and transparency, and maybe going back to SS in the pre, or at least in the phono pre. But who knows, the time might be right to give SS another try at the power postition.

Seeing this thread pop up again recently prompts to update my prior post. I did go SS in the phono and the pre, but I stayed tube in the amp department, fulfilling my criteria above by acquiring a pair of VTL MB-185 Signature mono's. I did a complete retube and got some PowerSnakes Sidewinders for them, and am pondering having mods done, but am still evaluating my long-term prospects with these before deciding on that. They did solve my power needs in the new room though, at about 200w a side into 4 ohms. All in all, I used my old C-J for about 3 1/2 years before making the change.

In my last post to this thread back in Oct. '02 I had moved to a bigger room and switched from a CJ MV-55 to a pair of VTL MB-185s. These were the only tubes left in my system after changing to solid-state pre and phono amps. Latest power amp switch this past summer was to a McCormack DNA-500, so no tubes left at all. Sonically I don't miss them with this amp; reliability wise I'm enjoying my newfound freedom from care and problems, which translates into more listening to music.