tube amps and electrostatics


What kinds of experiences have people had mating tube amps to electrostatic speakers (full range and/or hybrids)? I love the sound of both separately, but am concerned about the reactance of electrostats with tube power. I already own the CJ CAV-50 and am looking to upgrade my speakers with something in the $2500 range. Thanx, Dave
dabble
Yes yes yes tubes love stats ,,,, I have jolida mono blocks w/ my Martin Logan's clsiiz !,,,
Something like 80% of our MA-2 amplifier production has been for Sound Lab owners.

The Quad ESl 63 as been a good match for our M-60 and MA-1 amplifiers. Martin-Logans (which have a lower impedance) usually require a set of ZEROs (http://www.zeroimpedance.com) to work with many tube amps. The CLS-1 is an exception- its impedance was set higher and so is easier for tubes (M-L really wants their stuff to work with transistors, so even though they sound better with tubes, their impedance is usually set lower so transistors will have an easier time with them).

Some of the old Accoustats were an easy load for tubes and some were not, as Accoustat was trying to crack the solid state market too. If one of the higher impedance Accoustats, IME 50-60 tube watts is plenty of power.

The fact of the matter though is that the nature of tubes where they do not always act like a voltage source (which is the ability to double power as impedance is cut in half) is an advantage when trying to drive the higher impedances that an ESL often has. Unlike a box speaker where the high impedance in the bass can be the result of a box resonance, the high impedance of an ESL has nothing to do with resonance and so they still need power to drive them even though the impedance is high. Tube amps do this better than transistors.

As an example, a 600-watt transistor amp can't make any more power into a set of Sound Labs than you might get from a 150 watt tube amp. Put another way, a lower powered tube amp can often make as much or more power than a more powerful transistor amp when driving ESLs.

In short, ESLs and tubes have been one of the better combinations in audio for the last 55 years.
Probably why Quad, aka- Peter J. Walker(RIP) & 'The Acoustical Manufacturing Company', has been building a line of tube amps, for so many decades.
MartinLogan CLX speakers work very well with small tube amps and 50W is more than enough, according to Hi-Fi World. The reviewers were adamant about it in their CLX review.
I am presently running audiovalve challenger 180 monoblocks driving soundlab M2's with excellent results.I am able to roll el34,6550 and kt88's with these amps and the results are stellar.