I thought my philosophy of using a SS preamp with a tube amp was described adequately, but maybe not, so I shall ramble further. There are tube preamps that appeal to me but the balanced dual mono preamp I'm using (Kavent S33) is so good I don't think about it much...my tube power amp simply has a very pleasing 2nd order harmonic slam factor that many SS amps don't have, resulting, for my tastes anyway, in a more involving sound than SS. A preamp's signal is generally at such a low level it should be clean regardless if it's SS or tube so any form of distortion shoudn't be a factor, but the complicated interaction of an amp with speakers is another story and tubes are just more appealing to me. Note how many tubeless SS amps say "tube like" in their hype. I also have tubes in my motorcycle tires due to spoked wheels, and they sound better also.