Looking for (tube) sound advice

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Description of my rig and my skills:
I have a four way quad amped diy speaker system with ss amps. Then I heard the sound from a Copland tube amp and was hooked. My DVD player has two outputs. My current wiring goes from DVD to ht amp and from there to active xos for the other amps and of course I use the ht amp with passive xo for one of the ways. The multiamping is horizontal. I don't want to and can't afford to change to tubes amps right away so a preamp is what I need. I'm a student and am on a budget. I'm a diyer and want to build a kit as I don't want to spend time hunting parts for my first amp project. I've got a multimeter and soldering iron and quite a lot of experience soldering but I lack electronics and power skills hence a kit.
The real questions:
I like modern tube amp sound which I define as having a flat extended freqency response, low distortion, transparency, sweet sound but not overly mushy and overdone as in olde tube amps and lots of detail. As I mainly use my system for listening music I would like to have as few components in the signal path before my active xo, which means that I need two outputs that play at the same time and are able to put out undegraded sound compared to single output and the outputs should send equally loud signals at all volume levels. This requirement bypasses the Yamaha ht ss(yuck) amp's pre section for three of the four ways.
The real killer question is which kit preamp if any is capable of producing the above sounding changes to sound. Are similar sonic improvements achievable with pres as with tube amps? Which pre kits come closest to modern tube amp sounds? Or do tube pres differ from ss pres? I realize that I still have the ole ss amps driving the speakers but a pre is the cheapest and currently only buyable solution for changing the sound for all ways of my speakers. Amps come later when funds allow. The difficulty of assembly does not worry me but I would like the cost to not exceed 300 USD by much since I have to pay a third extra for vat and customs if the kit comes from outside the EU. I need 220v and 50 hz power supply. I'm not willing to futz around with mains power. I've looked at a lot of kits but the ones with enough outputs cost too much for me. What do you advice?
Thank you for your answers.
Janne RÃ¤sÃ¤nen a tube newbie burning for tube sound with low cash:-(

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Topic - Looking for (tube) sound advice - Janne RÃ¤sÃ¤nen 08:18:12 01/09/01 (0)

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