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Jim, Been there, done that... Now I'm going the other way 'round the circle... For over 15 years I used a trusty old CJ tube preamp with a home built solid-state push-pull MOSFET power amp. This was a great combo and I spent many hours enjoying it. Yes, it also helped to ease the pain of those early days of harsh CD. More recently, I replaced the old CJ preamp with a Classe solid-state preamp. My main motivation for the upgrade was simply to have a remote controlled preamp that was also capable of enjoyable sound. With my current modern CD equipment there was no noticeable increase in harshness, or any sonic degradation whatsoever. On the contrary, the Classe was much quieter and had much lower overall background noise, especially in its phono section. The overall tonality of the two preamps was surprisingly similar, with the solid-state preamp sounding just as "tubey" as the tube preamp. Since then I decided to bi-amp and I built a second amplifier, and this time it was a push-pull 6550C tube amp (since I am a long-time vacuum tube lover). I now have the push-pull MOSFET power amp on the woofers and the push-pull 6550Cs power amp on the tweeters. The current sound is the best it's ever been, and is really enjoyable. In summary, there is not as much of an advantage to doing this today with modern medium priced high end equipment, as there was just a few years ago. However, this advantage still exists today with lower priced equipment. At this more competitive lower price point it is still easier to build good sounding tube circuits, plus tube availability is actually on the rise. At the top of the high end it really doesn't matter, since there are plenty of good examples of both. It all comes down to price vs. performance, and in my case a little nostalgia too (plus I like to listen to power amps that I've actually built with my own hands). Kind Regards, Chris
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