Solid State Amps for Quad ESL 57?


My system is feeling pretty tube-y and I was looking for suggestions of a solid state amps that people are liking with their original Quad ESLs. Looking for more speed and more of the bass I know the Quads can put out if set up right.
dhcod
If you really want to use a ss amp. The JC-1s little brother the A21 is much cheaper and sounds excellent on my Innersound Kayas.
Sarcher30, Innersounds are built with lower impedances in an effort to make the speaker more compatible with transistors. The Quad ESL 57 has a peak of more than 50 ohms in the bass; there simply are not a lot of transistor amplifiers that can drive a load like that with any power.

To give you an example, let's try a 200 watt SS amp, which does 400 watts into 4 ohms. Into the Quad, it will be limited to about 30 watts in the bass. OTOH, it will be able to make 500 watts at high frequencies! Its easy to see why people perceive such amplifiers as very bright and no bass when used on the ESL 57.
Atmasphere, Thanks for setting me straight. I have no experience with quads and Atmasphere's knowledge is much more complete than mine. So it looks like a tube amp is the best course.

I read somewhere that for instance if 100 wpc into 4 ohms produces 100db spl then 100 wpc into 8 ohms should produce 103 db. I think it was a car stereo book. It seemed to say that every time you half the impedance you loose 3 db of output. This seems to contradict what you are saying. Does what they are saying only apply to the voltage paradigm and not the current paradigm. I've read many of your posts about this and I still don't quite understand it all.

Thanks
Sean
Hi Sean, Whatever that was that you read is misleading- it violates Kirchoff's Law, the law of electrical energy conservation. IOW if you put 100 watts into 4 ohms or 100 watts into 8, the output will be the same if the speaker efficiency is the same.
Hi Ralph, So can efficiency change with frequency? And if it can't how can a transistor amp sound right on a speaker without a flat impedance curve?