budget balanced pre amp, tube or SS?

Try one of the cheap Parasound or Acurus pre-amps. They are really dirt cheap and sound very clean, clear, and involving. I know the Parasound sounds silly good for the money. I just bought several of the Acurus R11 pre-amps based on their "underground" reputation as being giant killers - my ears will shortly tell me.

The Audiohorizons 2.0 and 2.1 pre-amps are sold on Audiogon and sound excellent. Air-Tight makes several fine sounding pre-amps. Both of these units will be in the near 2K to 3K range.

Jospeh Chow at Audiohorizons modified a very nice sounding Air Tight for me, even took the power suply out and built a separate box for it. He took a very nice pre-amp and turned it into a STUNNING performer.

Zephyr:

Google: "kandkaudio"

Yes, my preamp has dual balanced outputs for mains/stereo subs.

Thank you very much for the info!

I've been using a Marsh P2000b for years and find it to be very transparent and revealing but at the same time refined so it doesn't go too far. Thought that might be a good match for your system and I think it's under $1500 new. Here's a review from TAS although it's on the single-ended model, which is the same except lacks balanced connections:

http://www.avguide.com/products/product-2228/

Soundstage and Stereo Times reviewed the balanced version, FYI.

Best of luck.

Thanks for all tips guys!