Transistor Preamp that sounds like a Tube Preamp?

I second the Capri, the sound is lush, liquid, fatigue free and very very musical. Very organic and it does not have the typical soild state etching. but i think you have to pair it with a slightly neutral to warm amp.

Saxo, your comment

More hum and ground problems than with SS by far.

is really not right. Hum and grounding issues have nothing to do with the preamp being tube or solid state. It has to do with other design elements, such as power supply design and how well the designer understood internal grounding technique.

It is a fact that not all tube preamps suffer the colorations you describe also. In fact my experience is the opposite- that transistor preamp are far more colored (read: bright, analytical, stilted, etc.; clearly a different type of coloration than the types that tubes **can** exhibit). From your description, I have to guess that you have been listening to older/budget tube preamps??

I concede that tube preamps do need more service, like checking the tubes every 6 months/1 year. But a good tube preamp will also give you more music and that makes the price of admission cheap by comparison.

Well, many of us think that good tube pre-amps are not superior to good SS pre-amps. I think SS gets a bad rap because bad SS tends to sound worse than bad tube equipment and at the lower end of the price scale both are pretty limited.

Dave

Why would you want or waist your time trying to find a solid state pre that sounds like tube?...buy a tube preamp...but a quality one and forget about it...

Missioncoonery, I might ask why buy a preamp that sounds like either a tube or ss preamp. Until 5 years ago, I hated all ss preamps as well as passive preamps, with but one exception. Then I got my first H-Cat linestage. Now I have neither.