The small signal tubes in the preamp section seem to influence the sonics to a greater degree than the power tubes.

There is a huge upside to going with a tube preamp first if you want to play with tubes. They are generally more system friendly, cheaper to operate, more reliable, the tubes last longer and are usually cheaper and they don't create nearly the heat of a power tube and you don't need to worry about bias adjustments.

There are a lot of people who swear that tube preamps driving solid state amplifiers is da bomb. Of course, you have your ardent tube heads who wouldn't own a solid state amp if it was given to them.

I'd go with a tube preamp or tube integrated to get a good taste on the cheap. I'll warn ya now, tube rolling can be addicting and a lot of fun.

www.avahifi.com T8 pre map all tube or Ultra Pre Amp hybrid....Hybrid gets you there better, best of both

Tubes in the preamp SS for the subs and tubes for the ESL's. Now that's da bomb!

I've read that and idealic solution for use of a mixture of
tubes and solid state(the best of both worlds option,) is in a biamped system with tubes powering the top end and solid state powering the bottom end.Although I would imagine there would be a problem matching gains.Hmmm..Here is an interesting option tube a horn and solidify the rest.

anyway on topic,it seems to me that using a tubed preamp with a solid state amp would acheive the same effect as a hybrid amp.So it seems that putting a hybrid as the preamp would still acheive this goal.Goodluck

I use an external electronic crossover that has level adjustments to allow for different amps. I cross my ESL's over to the subs at 85Hz.