reason I said that was I tend to favour output stages as being considerably responsible for the character of an amp.
Personally for that reason, I would go for valve power and SS pre if you were to mix. ( i also have not been enamoured with most valve pres I have heard, too)
However, I think mixing myself is a crude attempt to get the best of both worlds, and a valve pre will not amerliorate a transistor power IMO.YMMV.
Vice versa.
Each to there own opinions, one hopes everyone is mature enough to disagree openly, that is what its all about, Tenson, no offence taken, keep on dishing, but hopefully none given either, that really was a sweeping generalisation and utter tosh lyons.
Everything that is not fact is an opinion, drawn from prejudice, experience, and myth. They are open to disagreement, as others find otherwise. Me no exception. I only have my opinions based on experience and bias.
Valves make rock music. guitar amps et al.
As to distortion, the type of distortion valves cause are low 2nd and 3rd harmonic, largely adding pleasantness, not harshness to the sound.
In any case, valve amps distortion is still held to be below 0.1 % audible, except for certain types of amps.
2nd harmonic is not really audible until it reaches 5% so you must be either imagining it or hearing something else, like using it way too loud, as musos can be prone to do, blowing speakers and amps to smithereens.
Obviously this is not what 20-50 watt amps are meant for.
Try a manley 500 watter amp and see if you find that distorts.or a big CJ, ...
...or that nice audio research, arggh...they look like 6550s, yank version of kt88s, must sound like a bad tranny amp
mind you , isn't that how ARCs are reputed to sound?
