"Warm Sounding" Solid State Amplifiers

What I hear with live music is sound that is really relaxed. It may get loud, but even when it does, there is no "cringe" factor. I think most audiophiles would be put off with this kind of "relaxation" in their home systems.

not me anymore!! I've learnt that this is the sound that I want from my system & it will be capable of delivering such a sound when I will find components that will keep the phase distortion down to a minimum. That's the reason I turned to 1st order x-over speakers which, when built correctly, are time-coherent speakers & finding electronics that is as true to the original sound as my budget could afford. Having had such an experience you find me endorsing time-coherent speakers every time I can. I've managed to FINALLY sway a few people on this forum that time-coherent speakers is the way to go after THEY heard time-coherent in THEIR system & agreed with that it was the only way to proceed.
Getting an amplifier that is as uncoloured as possible i.e. within one's budget is the right thing to do because an an accurate system will always be a true system long-term.

Try sitting down in front of a good unamplified string quartet, or a solo classical guitar, or a front row seat right in front of the string section of a full classical orchestra sometime. Its like a breath of fresh air.

AMEN!!
That's because there is no phase distortion from the electronics & esp. the speakers. What you are hearing are the fundamental tones + their harmonics directly from the various instruments with no electronics to muck that up. Such a delivery of sonics is *always* welcome & will *always* sound right not matter what the person's age.

I've owned several Bedinis. 25/25, 150MKII, 250/250, 100/100. They're all good amps, not great amps. The thing that's lacking in them is speed. The fastest one is the smallest one, the 25/25. But still too slow imo. I don't get the hyperbole about it. It's not hard to find an amp capable of driving low impedance. Now having said that, I still have the 100/100 which needs work. It has a sound stage that is holographic.

On the Canuckaudiomart there is a deal on for a Musical Fidelity A308 for $1300 CDN. I've been in contact with the seller but I feel like I'd be making too much of an impulse purchase. The few reviews I've found suggest that it is (as its brand name suggests) quite musical.

Can anyone add to or comment on that? Seems like a decent price but I know it's also an older unit and I don't know what the service is like with MF. I have heard many positive things in general about Musical Fidelity.

Google it and surf the banter about it.

Pontiflex,
if you like the Pass amps that much, it just might be worth your time to look into getting a Threshold amp. These were essentially Pass amps but marketed & sold by Threshold which was a down-market brand compared to a Pass. My brother used to own a T200 (100W/ch pure class-A amp) & i personally thought that it sounded really very good on all his music.
Another pure class-A amp i've liked is the Plinius SA-250Mk4 & it's smaller cousin the SA-100 Mk2 (I think i.e. re. the Mk number). The Plinius amps has a class-A toggle switch meaning that you can run the amp in pure class-A or toggle the switch & run it in class-AB. The Sa-100 plenty of current delivery capacity to drive most speakers & the SA-240 will drive practically any speaker.
FWIW.