Undertaker4, I was waiting for the electrostat users to show up. You should make a point of listening to your friend's M-L, as the transparency of the midrange may be your cup of tea, and the lack of deep bass may not upset you. Abstract7's cautions are excellent, and you should heed them. As far as the preamp/no preamp debate goes, I think that if you like the tube amps sound, you should consider going with a tubed preamp as well. Going straight into the amps with a CD player will give you better dynamics (I actually tried this with my Jadis tubed preamp, which clearly softened the initial edge of transients but, again, in a way I find more approximates a concert hall) and probably a little more low level detail, but you may lose a little of the tube dimensionality and, all right, I'll say it, pleasing harmonic distortions(!). The main reason, though, would be for the possibility of using other sources, be they a tuner, SACD, DVD-Audio or, most importantly, vinyl. BTW, my brother is a guitarist as well (I am too, but only acoustic these days), and he also prefers using tubed guitar amps for the reasons you mentioned.