Just going thru the Varmint XL-250 on the bench before I button it up and put it in the closet. 1 driving 2, three stage with Low, Hi, and Supermod. No preamp, but usually preamps on amps are trash anyway. Lot of folks say Varmints are noisy, trashy and junk, but after playing with a couple of them, with the supermod off, they are just normal grounded grid sweep tube amplifiers, like D+A or Palomar. The Supermod does turn the driver tube from grounded grid linear, to a modulator type driver though and probably what gives these amps a bad reputation. My thoughts are simple that you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet.
