Curious about running a tube pre into a SS integrated


I know it's been well-documented that there are some who find a tube preamp running into solid state amps the ideal blend of tubey-goodness and solid state impact and speed. 

I have, on occasion (depending on the listening material) run my vintage Luxman valve pre into the "Main" (pre bypass) section of my 509X integrated. On the right material it does offer an extended holographic image and almost magical quality to the front-to-back imaging of the sound stage. 

However, maybe due to the vintage nature of the preamp, it does seem to shrink the stereo sound field a bit, and also does not have the fidelity of the 509X pre. 

I have been considering swapping out the vintage valve pre with a PrimaLuna ProLogue preamp. I suspect that it would give me the holographic depth and sparkle that my vintage pre does, but with cleaner and more expansive sound.

At the same time, I have reservations about the overall synergy between PrimaLuna and the Luxman integrated. Hard to explain, but part of me wonders if it would be compromising the overall integrity of the sound...

I've considered just getting a DiaLogue integrated as an alternate system and swapping out cables when I want to listen to tube magic, but that seems kind of tedious and I'd be sacrificing the benefits of the solid state amplification on the bottom end of things. Plus the 509X makes swapping out line stage very easy with the "separate" function on the unit, so it's easy to do mid-playlist if the song benefits.

Anyone actually doing something like this with a higher end integrated?

 
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I would suggest if you really want to go the tube pre/ss amp route you ditch the integrated and go with separates.
I'm running a Luxman CL38U SE w/a Bryston 2.5 SST2 amp w/excellent results. I agree separates could be the answer.
I see both points, but it does kind of defeat the purpose of having the flexibility of the solid state pre and tube pre. With the 509X I have a top of the line integrated that separates the line stage to use any pre I want. It’d be quite an investment to start all over again and build a separate system from scratch, plus I’d be locked into a tube pre.

I think the PrimaLuna pre would work just fine for what I need, I was just curious if there were any stories of people here who had used a tube pre with a solid state integrated.


A lot of this benefit comes from driving hard to drive speakers, like ESLs.
If you have reasonably flat and high impedance speakers, tube amps are less disadvantaged.