Quandary

BTW, ditto from larryi's point of view.

Tube gear, in particular power amplifiers, vary much more in their sound than do solid state amps.  It is not easy to characterize tube amp sound and know tube amp ‘sound” from just a few examples—Audio Research sounds radically different from Audio Note.  Also tube amps require much more care in matching requirements of the speakers.  In that sense, good solid state is “safer” in terms of avoiding incompatibility.  I find Pass Labs to be decent solid state stuff; although much more particular in terms of speaker matching, Pass Labs’ other brand-First Watt—is even better sounding to me.

I went about halfway down into the comments, which go all over the place, and just jumped right to this. I’m glad to see you canceled the demo because though Pass amps are generally fantastic and I’m fairly sure you’ll like it over the Benchmark- you can demo any amp you want anytime you want and still get something that sounds terrific with your speakers. Do it in your time and in a deal that makes sense. I’m a guy who has no problem paying a restocking fee for an audition. You can pay restocking fees all over the internet and they won’t be $300.

And like everyone else, I’d never do business with a schmuck who makes such an ill intentioned offer- $300 to bring you a piece of equipment he wants to sell. That’s hillbilly sht. I’m from Brooklyn- I worked for the best goniffs in the business, most of them had a lot more class than that.