The FET/tube cascode offers pretty low noise, pretty high gain, and has the less edgy (than many solid state and some tube high gain stages)sound I attribute to tubes properly used. The noise isn't as low as some other configurations, but low noise isn't everything. The SE hybrid stage Marik is talking about at the input of the mic preamp he built using the K&K Audio phono preamp circuit has about 45-50dB of gain. Not bad for a small handful of discrete parts, but it can hardly compete with an op-amp, if you like that sort of thing!! Add a transformer coupled output stage with another 15dB of gain and an input transfomer with anywhere from 4 to 20dB and that should be enough gain for most any mic! Sometime next year I will adapt the phono preamp design to actually include phantom supply, gain adjustment, etc., to make it straightforward to implement as a mic pre.