Tube pre-amps $3500 under to add "warmth"

Mrtennis: Are you after a line stage or a full-function preamp? For older models of the extra-warm persuasion in the $1k range, consider the CJ Premier 10 for the former and the ARC SP-8 for the latter. Both of these models may have lacked many refinements at the frequency extremes, low-level resolution and dynamics of today's models, but the mids from each were glorious.

The SP-8 is not tube like? I give up!

... if i hear a bunch of stereo systems each having different preamps, i report what i hear.

Yes, but you are hearing and reporting on differences between systems.....NOT preamps.

MrT - Are you coming to conclusions on the differences of preamps based on each of them being heard in different systems? If so, how can you say one preamp is "warmer" than the other. For example, I can take the warmest preamp from the 80s, use it to drive a Mark Levinson (Madrigal) amp from the 90s and then into a pair of Thiel 2 or 3 series speakers. In such a system, there is no way anyone would ever know that there was a tube preamp in the system at all.....you'd swear you also had a Krell or Madrigal preamp from the same era.