Recommendation for higher power tube amp

So...

I may have what you need.  I have an ARC VT100 mkiii, an ARC VT200 and a pair of ARC VTM200’s.  All are recently retubed and in 9/10 condition. I am the original owner of the VTM200’s.  The other 2 were demos.

What I like about these amps is the they have 4, 8 and 16 ohm taps. I would use the 4 ohm taps for your speakers. You can check them at www.arcdb.com.

chip houst

OK- we can do the math again. 200 watts is about 4x the power of the amp in the OP. That's about 6dB.


So the speakers are ***84dB 1 watt/1 meter***! If a speaker that was only 90 dB (which is easy to find) the amp he has now would make the same sound pressure. The thing is, the bigger you make a tube amp, the harder it becomes to make an output transformer that has bandwidth. Because big tube amps are expected to make bass, often its the highs that suffer but often the bass suffers a bit too. The only exception to this rule is if an OTL is used; then its possible to scale the amp to any power without loss of bandwidth.


But a 200 watt OTL on this speaker is impractical- and that would be only to maintain the bandwidth he has already. So it makes more sense to change out the speaker for something more efficient than it does to change out the amp- the latter is nearly a Sisyphean task. Even with 200 watts this speaker isn't going to be able to make satisfying sound pressures in most rooms if you want to play anywhere near realistic volume levels.

But you don't have to lose any resolution (in fact many think that you gain resolution) with higher efficiency speakers. In my example of my first post on this thread, I showed that an amp of 1.7 watt could keep up with his BAT amplifier if that amp was on a set of ZU Audio loudspeakers. This means that a 7 watt amplifier could keep up with a 200 watt ARC in the same circumstances.


The bottom line here is its very obvious that the speaker needs to be replaced if tubes are going to be used. 

OK, my takeaways are - 
1) Get different speakers (currently favoring the Devore 3XLs based solely on web based research) or
2) Go tube pre and very high power amp or
3) Try a Music Reference RM-200, no holding my breath for sonic epiphany (and also being wary of falling boulders, while Persephone (my wife?!?) looks on from the kitchen).

mikapen - I would love to find that dealer w/ amps I could demo at home, but living two hours from civilization makes this tough.  I did actually find a dealer in the big city who just happened to have the 2.3s sitting around, let me try several amps with them, which is how I started down the tube amp road in the first place.    

Great discussion and insights, this has helped me make informed choices, plus entertaining as always, thanks all.

Have you considered running a powered sub and limiting the signal to the Thiels?   I have the Thiel PCS speakers, which are basically the top end of the 2.3/2.4's, with a powered-Sub, all driven by an ARC VS-55 (puts out about 45-watts a side) that gives me near concert level volume.  Fyi, I use a pre-pro to handle the speaker setup.

btw, I would highly not recommend buying anything that you can't return based on internet reviews.  I have been utterly destroyed by that in the past.  It's pretty amazing how erudite some def people can be!