Your tube preamp and ss amp thread


Last night I was listening to my tube preamp and my tube mono blocks, noticed an imbalance in the sound, and as usual I traced it to a tube problem in the mono blocks. Luckily, I also own a ss stereo amp as a 'backup'. IME, ss amps tend to be a lot more reliable than tube amps. Nonetheless, I would be interested in how many other folk run a tube preamp and ss amp combo, and if so, what are your choices.
128x128daveyf
Backert Labs 1.3X to Pass 250.8 works really well....of course there are so many other variables but in my room the dynamics are incredible and the soundstage is vivid.
When I first got into this hobby on a serious level, I always ran an ARC tube preamp - SP6, SP10, SP11 with a Threshold Solid State Class A biased power amp - 400A, SA4e, SA12e x2 - and I never really incurred any issues regarding channel balance,  etc. Things were so much simpler back then and matched dual triodes were much much cheaper ;-).