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

Mr. Tennis, have you auditioned a Jadis JPL? That might be the sort of thing you're looking for (or, even better, a Jadis JP80 or JPS2 line stage). Jadis is very natural sounding on recordings of acoustic instruments. From my limited auditoning, I'd say that Shindo Labs preamps might also be worthwhile hearing as well.

I'm surprised about Mr. Tennis' reaction to the JPL too; at least the earlier version of that line stage, with Telefunken or EI tubes in it, has all the tube bloom you could want (the JP80 even more so), particularly when I had it paired with the Jadis JA80 amps. What was in the rest of the system? Could the source of your problem be there (i.e., pairing the tube preamp with an early solid state amp or CD player)? Definitely a mystery. I would think that the Audio Note components would fill the bill too, but now I'm not so sure.

MrT--Well, I must admit that a CJ PV5 is a different animal than the Jadis, it certainly has more of that old-fashioned tube sound that it appears you're looking for. Jadis, in its earlier versions before they started using Philips caps, has more of what you're looking for than most preamps, but it still might not fill the bill. My old JP80MC would have given you what you wanted, I think, because I had it modified by Andy Bouwman at Vintage Tube Services with what he then called his "Romantic Era" treatment (as I did with my JA80s as well). I don't think that Andy does this anymore on a large scale, but you might want to call him just to see, as he is a fan of the old-fashioned tube sound and I believe was designing a preamp that would bring back a lot of that tube magic. Worth a try if you're seriously looking for that sound--in fact, he might be able to re-fit an old CJ for you with vintage parts so you wouldn't have to worry about replacing the old parts with newer, more "modern-sounding" (for lack of a better phrase) components.