Zaikesman: I am not having anyone on... I would never do that, especially here. I purchased the 2A3 amps to use with my DIY single-driver speakers I'm building. In the meantime, I hooked them up to my Thiels - yes, they do make more than enough SPL levels for classical/jazz for my ears in my room. But, the CAT preamp has a signal gain of 24 db which goes a long way in making them work the way they do for me. Granted, they cannot handle orchestras, rock, choral, pipe organs, etc., but string quartets and the such come through loud and clear. Heck, even symphonies are handled for the most part satisfactorily. I'll dust off my Radio Shack sound level meter and post back what I get at my normal listening levels.
My mainstay amps that I currently use with the Thiels are a pair of Mark Levinson 20.6 monoblocks (100W ea). I'm not saying that all SET's work for everybody's setup the same, but don't outright dismiss low power, high dynamic headroom SET's with 86 db/2.83V/4 ohm speakers - especially that most listening levels in a lot of living rooms are produced by far less power than one would think. But if you're tastes lean towards shaking the walls... and, to recall, this thread stated that "... volumes are kept very low..."
My mainstay amps that I currently use with the Thiels are a pair of Mark Levinson 20.6 monoblocks (100W ea). I'm not saying that all SET's work for everybody's setup the same, but don't outright dismiss low power, high dynamic headroom SET's with 86 db/2.83V/4 ohm speakers - especially that most listening levels in a lot of living rooms are produced by far less power than one would think. But if you're tastes lean towards shaking the walls... and, to recall, this thread stated that "... volumes are kept very low..."