Best Cheap Amps for Magneplanar Speakers

Maggies draw tremendous current from an amplifier which can cause the internal power supply voltages to fluctuate dramatically in response to the music. This reduces the power from the amp and causes the distortion and bias to be modulated by the music. 

One of the best amps that deals with this is the Sanders Magtech, one of the only amps available with a regulated power supply, and is a great match for Magnepans.

The Sanders magtech is $5,000 so outside the scope of this thread - unless they have a less spendy one I'm not aware of.  It is also designed to drive wildly varying impedance loads of electrostatic speakers.  maggies, while planars, are NOT electrostatics and present a simple 4 ohm load across the freq. range.  They certainly can use a lot of oompah but are a lot 'kinder' to amps than electrostatics.

If I decide to replace my somewhat elderly Sunfire with something at the $3k or above range, it might be the new Benchmark...

Thanks everybody for the responses!  And have a good new years.

You can find the Magtech used for $2900.

Back at you Randy. Happy New Year!

Dave

I drive mine with Marantz MA-700 monoblocks. Not made anymore, but you'll see them pop up occasionally for $175-250. But keep in mind that I've been through blind amp tests that put me in the "watts is watts" (given all the standard qualifiers) class. So given that, if I were buying new monoblocks I'd get Outlaw Model 2200 ($379/ea).