I actually enjoy a solid state pre with tube amplification. You get to hear what the tube amp can do. Although having a tube pre gives you more flexibility if you want to "tweak" the sound with different tubes. There is lots of affordable solid state pre with higher gain for cheaper pricing than tube pre's in the same price range.
When your running lower power amps that extra gain is needed.
Stick to 2x6 suggestion of getting a SET tube amp rather than higher power Push Pull. The SET maybe lower power but the midrange is sweet and detailed. You lose a little of the top and low range. The Push Pull amps maybe more powerful for the price but you sacrifice some midrange but get a bigger range.
I currently run a Radii GS-33SE monoblock amps
http://www.spacelofts.com/h30/radii.jpg
http://www.radaudio.com/gs33.html
They power by 90db 4ohm speakers to my loud listening level of 80+db using a passive preamp. I plan to get a solid state pre-amp with higher gain.
http://thetunerguy.com/new_radii.html
http://www.radaudio.com/power.html
The north american distributor informed me that Radii comes out of the same factory in china as Antique Sound Lab. One nice thing about Radii is that most of their amps/pre "supposedly" come out with Black Gate capacitors and Alps controllers. Some Radii models are similar to ASL models. Radii is pretty new.
