Joule Electra preamps and amps. What is your impression?

Thaluza,

Appreciate your guidance. Yes, I would consider built-in phono too, but I strongly prefer separate phono stage. It also allows me to record onto tape directly not through tape-out.

Inna, you might want to consider Aesthetix for an all tube system. I was also considering Joule at one point, but the lack of factory and dealer support made me rethink the product line.

Best of luck with your search.

JIm Perry

I've owned two Joule preamps and Joule phono stages. I agree with the characterizations above. The preamps are rich tonally, and work great with a variety of amps both ss & tube. These days they are a nice value used. Rich Brkich at Signature Sound is great resource for everything Joule Electra (sales & service). He's worked w/Judd for decades.
The phono stages are more sensitive to RFI interference than many others I tried. Granted, I gave them a torture test, living about 1500ft from a radio tower, but after many calls with Judd and experiments with tinfoil, etc. we concluded that only turning my home into a Faraday cage would get it totally quiet. Then out the door it went. 
The amps are OTL and wonderful sounding with the right speakers, and only the right speakers. I don't buy the argument that Speltz autoformer makes any speaker compatible, etc. To me they degrade sound quality. The noise from variac and voltage fluctuations do make the amps a bit of a labor of love, but for the right mindset owner, really awesome. FWIW, I put the Atma-Sphere amps in the same conversations but with the benefits of Ralph & team. Cheers,
Spencer

Wonderful musical great after market service.

This is an interesting situation. It appears that preamps would be an excellent choice, as for phono amd amps, there may be too many compatibility issues and noise problems.Hmm..