Which preamp to buy?

With your equipment, you probably need a preamp that warms the sound a little (particularly for Jazz).

I would suggest a Cary SLP-88, available well under your price limit. Another option would be a Rougue 66.

Michael

I agree with the others with the c-j 17LS recommendation. Well worth the additional dollars!

Good Luck!*>)

And now for something completely different. I don't subscribe to the "all Krells are bright,(etc.)". I think the KSA 250 might even be a bit warm. If you want to balance the sound that attracted you to the KSA 250 in the first place with some tubes, I suggest a Sonic Frontiers Line stage. A very neutral tube stage that has a low output impedance, is DC coupled (Krells rightly or wrongly are reputed to be sensitive to DC offset), offers true balanced inputs and outputs, a nice remote and is built as well as a Krell. BTW, I've been using c-j pre/power on Thiels for many years.

VTL 2.5 or 5.5. Both are currently in production, VTL seems like it is going nowhere, and the two units sound very good. The 5.5 is a great piece and the successor to the great VTL Ultimate preamplifier.

For what its worth, I paired an earlier CJ preamp, the PV-10, with an Aragon 4004 SS amp about 10 years ago when I bought my present system, after hours of A/B tests with tube and SS amplification at the dealer. The Aragon amp is a lesser-powered derivative of the more famous 8008BB designed by a former Krell engineer. The combo drives B&W 801 Matrix speakers. The system performance jumped dramatically when I had the CJ subjected to a full standard mod including the highest quality passive parts, tubes and work on the power supply. Then I had the same thing done with the SS amp with further improvement. I haven't tested the modified preamp against any current CJ model which would cost much more than the total of my PV-10 plus mods, because I haven't felt the need to. In fact, on a cost/value basis, I began to wonder if a good audio technician could accomplish more for my system than swapping out older equipment for newer.