[prepress]

Originally Posted by PeterMusic

I do not understand your concern. From your signature--you've dropped tens of thousands on your system. If you decided a tube power amp sounded better, would you really care about a few hundred dollars every few years?

While it is rare, I have heard about some catastrophic tube failures in power amps (amp damage and such). That was quite a while ago, and today's tube amps are more reliable certainly, but those old horror stories stuck with me and were a big reason I avoided tubes. But I didn't hear such stories about preamps, so between that and high praise for the C2300 I took a plunge. No real interest in switching out my current amps, unless at some point I do so because of how heavy they are, since I'm getting older and less able to manage them.

Being near retirement (I hope), the additional money for tube replacement could make a difference later on, and if I downsize in preparation for said retirement it would be for inexpensive solid-state. But I think the tube/SS combo is a really good idea.