I do have a possible candidate - if you are willing to buy used! Get a Golden Sound SE-40 PSE amp. I have one also - forgot to mention it in my above post! This uses three 6L6G's in parallel per channel. About 18 wpc! Capable of driving many more speakers than the sub-10 watt SE amps! And the 6L6G's are cheap and plentiful because they are a popular guitar amp power tube. Though in guitar amps they are used in PP pairs. The SE-40 is single-ended parallel. And is no longer in production. They are still available on the used market for around $700. You could buy two for $1400 and parallel the outputs - giving you a respectable 36 wpc - for a reasonable price! I of course bought my SE-40 used. So there you have it - a SE amp that could drive your B&W's - especially if you buy two of them!
SET amplifier recommendation
I have been listening push-pull tube amp for a long time. Finally I'd like to try SET. Seems a lot of people moving from push-pull to SET. My budget is <$3000. Looking at Coincident Dynamo MK III 300B. As there is no dealer for Coincident, i can not try it/hear it. Anyone has this? I'd like to hear your comments. i also looked at Decware, Bottlehead, etc. It seems Dynamo is better. Line Magnetic has some interesting ones. But i am not sure the quality can match Canadian made one.
My main speaker is B&W 805. Listening space is less than 400 sq ft. My current push-pull setup is CJ premier 15+CJ premier 17ls2+ Audio Research VT100 MKI. Thank you.
My main speaker is B&W 805. Listening space is less than 400 sq ft. My current push-pull setup is CJ premier 15+CJ premier 17ls2+ Audio Research VT100 MKI. Thank you.
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- 59 posts total
Get a Golden Sound SE-40 PSE amp.roberjerman2, do you mean the ubiquitous Golden Tube Audio SE-40? If so, my guess is two of these bridged might work with the OP's B&W 805s but that's a hard row to hoe. These amps need to be rebuilt and matched in order to extract the best sound and run reliably (ask me how I know this). The B&W speakers are voiced for SS amplification and are never going to sound their best with tube amplification; possibly with the exception of a pair of Atma-Sphere OTL monoblocks. My recommendation is to stay with SS or, if the OP really wants to do SET, change the speakers to something more appropriate. |
The B&W speakers are voiced for SS amplification and are never going to sound their best with tube amplification; possibly with the exception of a pair of Atma-Sphere OTL monoblocks. My recommendation is to stay with SS or, if the OP really wants to do SET, change the speakers to something more appropriate. +1. (Although Ralph/Atmasphere is of course much better positioned than I am to comment on the suitability of his amps for this particular speaker). And it’s not just a matter of having enough power. Given that the speaker is presumably voiced with solid state amplifiers in mind, which almost always have a near zero output impedance, the interaction of the very wide impedance variations of this particular speaker (see Figure 1 of JA’s measurements) with the relatively high output impedance of nearly all tube amps will result in a tonal balance that was not intended by the speaker’s designers. Regards, -- Al |
- 59 posts total