TUBE or SS?

I too have had good results by using a tubed pre and a solid state amp,if used with the right cables! The S.F.Line2 sounds very good with my Krell KSA-150 With the right cables between them but can sound harsh with the wrong ones in there. As someone mentioned earlier the speakers may dictate what combo you may wish to go for.....If you have a speaker that you already like look at it's requirements and work backwards from there.

I too have had good results by using a tubed pre and a solid state amp,if used with the right cables! The S.F.Line2 sounds very good with my Krell KSA-150 With the right cables between them but can sound harsh with the wrong ones in there. As someone mentioned earlier the speakers may dictate what combo you may wish to go for.....If you have a speaker that you already like look at it's requirements and work backwards from there.

I've been both ways. Tube on pre, tubes on amp, both and none. My favorite is tube pre and ss for exactly the same reasons everyone has mentioned above. When you get too many tubes in the system, however I find a loss of detail and a too laid back sound. Besides then when one tube goes bad you have to sort through ten or fifteen tubes to find I've not heard some of these new "super" tube amps like the problem tube. And it get's expensive to boot. However, Manley or Wolcott. So my advice would be if you are going on less than 5K budget, keep it cheap all around and do tubes on the pre and ss on amp.

Sorry I guess when I submitted I garbled the post...sorry.

Tom, Tubegroover, Phill; You guys are a tough and dedicated lot, and I surely do appreciate your posts. Truth of timbre is also probably the single most important characteristic of music to me too. And I think tube amps maybe promote it moreso than SS. In fairness, when I auditioned the tubed SFS-80, I had too big speakers in a too small room so it wasn't a very fair audition-- and in those days I had to run my 2Ces at low volume. I'm intrigued by tube amps, and have never read anything bad about BAT or the newer ARCs. My big McCormack DNA-2DX is pretty sweet as SS amps go, but I'd sure like to try some good tube amps in the $5k - $7.5k range (MSRP). I'd have to look for a used one though. Do you guys have any experience/observations on Sonic Frontiers Power 2 or 3 tube amps? I'm also kind of interested in some of the mid-sized VTLs-- seems like you get a lot of power for reasonable cost, and the option of triode operation. I've read that Richard Vandersteen uses an SS pre-amp and big ARC tube monos. Thanks, and Cheers. Craig.