Suggestions for a tube pre and power amp

@quincy Thank you very much for sharing your real life experience with CJ gears. My speakers are 91dB sensitivity but impedance dip to around 3 ohms. I assume compared to Kef Reference3 speakers Revels will be easy to drive. Sure will let every one know once I make the decision.

@lals I currently landed back on matching a SS pre and amp combo, both Krell, Illusions ii pre and 300xd Amp.  Along the way I paired a Coda # 8 with the Coda CB Pre, Coda 07x pre, Zesto Leto Pre (Tube) Primaluna Evo (Tube) and PS Audio BHK Pre (Tube Hybrid).  I also paired these pre’s with the Krell 300xd amp.  I found it way more difficult to match the pre with the rest of my gear, my speakers are Alta Audio, sensitive but 4 ohm, they’ve current and have a transmission line design that shines with amplification that has an iron grip on the speakers drivers.  The gear outside the speakers is designed to function best balanced, that also raises the gain, signal.  Overall, tricky combo to manage.  All that said, I think for most, if you like some tube flavor, sound, a Tube Pre paired with a SS Amp is the best combo for most systems.  For my set up though, I had a really hard time finding balanced Tube Pre’s that paired well from a voltage / gain standpoint with my SS amp. Balanced Tube Pre’s are out there but unbalanced are far more common.  The Tube Pre I had the most success with was the PS Audio BHK, It brought that tube magic, you could tube roll and really get the flavor of the different tubes.  I think partly though because of the gain and my sensitive speakers, it could be noisy.  So, that’s why I’d lean into the opportunity to talk with the various brand reps about the gear you have, what matches best in their opinion, and I would research your speakers, find out what others have found to be the best pre/amp combo.  I can tell you from experience, it’s not just the specs, what you see on paper, my speakers on the surface don’t appear to be a great match for the amp I have but at Audio Shows they got paired together because they brought the best out of each other, I was able to talk with the founder, owner, designer of the speakers who was able to highlight why.  From what I’ve found on my journey so far is synergy is key, you want to find real world examples of synergy, not just what appears to be a match on paper and if the brands you are interested in offer access to the designers of the gear, invaluable to talk with them.  

@mm1tt77 Thank you very much for sharing your experience. As you mentioned balanced preamps (completely balanced from input to output) are there but not too common as compared to non balanced. There may be many options in the super expensive league. I am little surprised to hear that you didnt get good synergy between Coda No8 and Coda 07x FET Preamplifier. I heard Coda dealers use it with No16 and other higher power amps. Interesting to know that you had best success with BHK preamp, I read it somewhere that it is bit noisy. I have been to Axpona couple of times and Revels are paired with Mark Levinson or Arcam amps hence it is bit difficult to know real life synergy from shows. 

The Coda 07x would be an excellent pairing with any of the Coda amps, I ended up keeping the Krell in my system and preferred the BHK and the Krell Pre’s with Krell amp.  If you end up with a Coda Amp, the 07x would be a phenomenal pairing.  

@lals I have a coda s5.5 and an Aric Audio Motherlode XL in my system. They sound wonderful together. The coda is a newer addition that replaced a Hegel H30 and I was quite surprised how much I enjoyed the sound the coda produced over the Hegel. Doug over at coda is a good guy and can tell you if he thinks the s5.5 or the #8 would be better with your speakers and their impedance dip. I don’t think you will be disappointed with either coda unit.