Tube or SS amp with Blue Heron 2's?

I had the exact problems with my Blue Herons as you are discribing. They are a very well built speaker & I love Pat McGintys less is more crossover philosophy, but they were driving me crazy. No dynamics, little resolution, just plain dead sounding. I do not care what the reviewer on enjoythemusic.com says. However, since I have an electronics back ground and am very handy with a soldering iron, I set forth to find a better solution than constant expensive amp swapping. I first began experimenting with four different capacitors. The Auricaps that come with the speakers are simply too bloomy in the midrange with no dynamics, & too little detail, resolution, and spatial depth and soundstaging capabiltities. I first tried Mundorf Supremes. You only need two caps for each speaker. One 4.7uf or 5uf for the Audax gas tweeter and one 15uf for the Audax midrange. I just loved the spatial qualities and terrific depth and width of this cap. However, as with the Auricap, it was also a little on the dull side with not much more in the way of dynamics & resolution. Next I tried the TRT Dynamicaps. Now, all the dynamics, proper tonality, and tranparency were there, but not much in the way of depth or spatial qualities. To have it all I tried both Mundorf Silver/Gold & Jantzen Silver Z caps. The Mundorf S/G were only a little better overall in a direct comparison to the Silver Z. The Mundorf S/G, have the best depth and spatial qualities of any cap I have heard, with fabulous dynamics, tranparency, resolution, detail, you name it. Is it any wonder it is the cap of choice for Magico speakers and many others. They are unfortunatly 3 times the cost of most of the other caps I have previously mentioned. Although they are currently 25% off at www.soniccraft.com. The Jantzen Silver Z from Denmark are available from PartsExpress here in the states. (Not to be confused with Jensen) They are very close to the overall sound of the Mundorf S/G but at half the price. The Jantzen Silver Z are maybe a hair more detailed and tranparent, with not quite the depth & width of soundstage. You can not go wrong with either cap. I personally also changed the .82mh. 14awg. Solen air core inductors with 14awg. Alpha-Core copper foil jobs, further tightening & cleaning up the bass from 300hz. on down. Surprisingly the stock inductor for the all important Audax midrange 300hz. to 5khz. was a cheap in house off the shelf Madisound .158mh air core coil. I wanted to replace it with an Alpa-Core silver foil coil inductor but they stopprd making them, so I used the same value 16awg. Alpha-Core copper foil instead. The midrange is now so much more open, dynamic and transparent. Some folks when changing coil inductors will use the 12awg. for least resistance. However, if you lower the DCR too drastically it could have a negative effect on the overall toneality of the speaker because each driver will be running more efficiently. Also surprisingly, the difference in the value of the original Auricaps between each speaker was as much as 4-5% which to me is inexcusable in an $8000.00 speaker. I matched the caps and coils to less than half a percent. The difference this makes in the soundstage and pin point imaging is unmistakeable. Let me know if you live anywhere in the northeast I would gladly help you out if you wish to make a really good pair of Blue Heron speakers absolutely unbelievable.

I am running my pair with a BAT VK-300x-se integrated and they sound amazing. One thing I found was that they are super sensitive to setup with respect to the way they are tipped. A few degree too forward and I couldn't believe how muddy the bass was. Pull out a good level and give that a try.

BTW they are way better the the kestrel hotrods I also own.

OOPs, Meant Blue Heron not the II's.