I live in a far remote area so no chance to listen to other gear, with a pre amp that uses tubes it would give me more chance to tailor the sound for my preference, my speakers are bbc speakers, so easy to amplify, they are 8ohm and don’t go below 6ohm, but they are very revealing in tone and timbre, tone, timbre and space I find tube do better than solid state, and by changing the tubes I can get closer to my sound ideal.
For power amp I had planned to buy a Belles sa100 that I can get at half price (demo) but have also heard very good things about the Van Alstine set400, will see what I end up with, wish there was a solid state pre that sounded like tube ))) then no need for replacing tubes;-)