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Starved plate tube designs are 99.99999% marketing crap. They use $1 Chinese 12AX7's basically as high pass filters in a horribly misguided attempt at "warmth", and honestly it jacks up the price while at the same time screwing with the sound. There are some hybrid tube/solid state designs that are quite good. Manley's 16x2 mixer comes to mind in this scenario, a design that uses both tube and solid state at various places in the signal path to combine the two colors. But your basic "toob" stuff is not good. You want "warmth'' in a pre? Get some well designed iron in the signal path.
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