MurrayLives
Born to lose, live to win
Using a SS pre-amp with a tube power amp could be a viable option and would allow you to focus on a higher powered tube amp. With any amp & pre-amp you do need to consider synergy - same also with the speakers; they might play well together but you will not really know how well until you try them.
Tube amps are notoriously fickle about what feeds them and what they feed. So long as you keep an eye towards your input/output impedances you'll probably be okay on the amplification side. Speakers are much tougher, so be sure to audition them in your system or at the very least have a good return policy.
On the flip side, much of the tone, warmth, character or whatever attributed to tubes is introduced in the small signal tubes in pre-amp stages and this is often where you can play with different tube manufacturers & tube types (tube rolling) to experience their perceived different effects on the music output.
This is actually what I don't like about tubed preamps: you're setting a global tone control in yet another stage of your amplification chain. This is what lead me to switch to a passive pre, but if I ever needed to go back to a active preamp, it'd be SS.
To points that have nothing to do with the quoted... I've run tube amps from 4-250 watts, through efficient and inefficient speakers, and what I'll say is watts matter. Even if you aren't running your volume control to 50%, the bass is demanding a lot more of your amp than the volume would suggest. Watts equal presence in an amp. I used to poo-poo this notion, but they matter. 60ish watts is probably the sweet spot for tube power amps, so I wouldn't look much below that number. IME.