Tubes vs Tubeless

Your Linn gets the music right - a spin thru the Linn Record division jazz offerings should tell you they have… good engineering sense and good ears. Probably the guy I trust most who carries both Linn and Vandersteen is Rick in Fort Collins. I believe it would be worth your time to call.

as an aside the Vandersteen 3A signature is in my mind a different beast which richly rewards a SS amp with iron grip in the low end - I owned them for a decade with SS amplifiers. My brother still runs them with a big Threshold.

I helped setup a pair of Quattro yesterday w SM SAS power and VTL tube line stage… lovely sonics…

have fun OP hopefully you don’t get sucked into what I call the DAC de jour crowd… but I suppose that is a different thread… eh…

I would pursue biamping so you get the best of both worlds. You’re gonna probably spend more money than you want but you should reach for quality rather than upgrading later which is a very big financial mistake.

Spend time with your decision don’t rush it and talk to a lot of people.

Harmonics are a lot better when you have tubes. Preamp with tubes is a good starting point. Stay away from inefficient speakers. Conrad Johnson and vac amplifiers are real good and I wish I had VAC but they don’t do biamping amps and no one does which makes it harder except for McIntosh who makes a biamp amplifier but it’s very very big but very very nice. It’s the 901, and expensive

@tomic601 Thank you for a great suggestion.

@emergingsoul My thinking is that this will be my final audio setup (you’ve probably never heard that before, ha) so I’m willing to spend a possibly a lil more than originally expected but I do have $ limits, thank God.

@bahston At least a few have suggested tube preamp and SS amps. It's a combination that I've enjoyed for a long time, 25 years or so but was only on the analog side until the last year when I switched to all tube preamp. I have found that I enjoy Cd's a lot more than I used to, especially high res types, especially HDCD. It takes a matching player to appreciate them but it's old technology and getting cheap on the used market. 

Lots of popular tube preamps out there, many mentioned here. I use a Cary SLP 98P F1, many have moved on to newer types. I would also match your Vandys with a good power source if you want to get the most out of them. If they are rated for 150 WPC, find a good SS amp that is at or near that. I am a big believer in matching speakers with at or near what they are rated for. This thinking has kept me happily listening for over 50 years. Odyssey is a name that many talk about and they make very affordable SS Amplifiers in that power range. There are boatoads of choices, just thought I'd toss in a couple more. 

Best of luck in your search but I would never give up on LP's or Cd's. Streaming may be great but I still enjoy physical media. I'm not alone but am a minority in that I have yet to get into streaming.