What is the best 2A3 SET Amplifier?

For your hi-end Avantgarde 2.1, you should use the best 2A3 SET amp that money can buy.
Forget about the Cary, Wavelength or any SET amp that are made in USA(they are beginner in SET amp design!) - poor design, very low quality parts that including the output transformer!
*Cary designed a 300B amp that give out 15 watts/channel. I don't think the designer understands the 300B tube at all. It is a complete joke!

If you have the $$$, the best is:
Audio Note "Japan" 2A3 SET amp
JC Verdier 2A3 SET amp and similar 2A3 SET amp from L'audiophile

And remember always use NOS 2A3 tubes, please don't use any modern 2A3 tubes........

"Forget about the Cary, Wavelength or any SET amp that are made in USA(they are beginner in SET amp design!"

Funny - Last time I checked, it was the "novice" engineers in the good old U.S. that created the entire series of 2A3 and 300B tubes to begin with - oh about 70 or so years ago. You're saying that current crop of U.S. audio technicians and engineers can't make a decent SET Amps?

Go crawl back into your hole.

The Sun 2A3 amp is very highly regarded and reasonably priced.

The best sounding 2A3 SET I've heard is the Fi 2A3 designed and built by Don Garber. I drove a pair of Kochel horns with the Fi 2A3 monoblocks and the sound was nectar. RCA NOS and KR 2A3's sounded better than the stock Chinese tubes, and although the amps sounded great stock, I swapped the stock Magnequest OPT's with Tamura with a noticeable improvement. I demoed/heard most of the above mentioned 2A3's and thought the Fi sounded best. This is a VERY simple yet elegant design. Contrary to the above post, I heard Cary, Wavelength and Wellborne and thought they were excellent and well designed and have the utmost respect for Ron and Gordon, clearly not beginners. In fact Gordon Rankin and Don Garber have been harbingers in SET design and quietly pushing forward for years, well before SET's "came" into fashion. You have quite a few outstanding products from which to choose.

There is no "Best". How much do you want to spend? How much have you listened to SETS? I have never heard an amp that is best for all applications or all types of music.

For the price of an expensive SET you can easily get two or three great SETS and tweak them into great ones. Most all are compromises of one sort or another and differ with regard to circuit design and therefore sound. The Bottlehead Set mentioned above, for example, uses SS rectification and "parallel feed" which lightens the job of the transformer. Not 'better" or worse", just gives a distinct sound (It is a very nice piece and quite different in its approach.) In my opinion that kit would be a great place to start with SETS if you want excellent sound and you want to learn what SETs are about.


If you do not want to solder every once in a while my advice is to not blow the bank on your first SET. Get a used unit that has good resale in the secondary market(easy to sell when you make the next step). Do a lot of careful listening and see what you like about it with various types of music. Learn a little about about how they work. Again, one nice thing about SETs is that they are comparitively simple. You can tweak them fairly easily to suit your own ears/room/music. This is a great advantage if you ask me. It's like home cooking. You can cook to your taste for 1/15th the cost of a big name restaurant. You can have a 300b and a 2A3 and more.

If you take the "best that $$ can buy approach" you will spend a lot of money. The biggest thing you pay for is the low number of units sold (thus no volume and a high per unit price.) If you have not interest in tweaking I guess this doesn't help.

Finally, I hesitate to say this, but the one guy who posted above (nothing worthwhile in the US/ $$ will buy everything) sounds like a complete fool to me.

Cheers,