What is the best 2A3 SET Amplifier?

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,

Josh Stippich's amp. See it at: http://www.electronluv.com/hostedsites/electronluv.com/ (Can't seem to get the picture to show up here via HTML...)

-Ed

Mr Clueless, Your philosophy makes lots of sence. Especially in SET case, it's possible to get two SET amps or two pairs of monoblocks instead of buying one expencive and achieve higher results in horizongal bi-amping if such thing is possible.

Yes, you are absolutely right. The good old US did created the 2A3/300B and even the SET amp but those are accient history........ But they also the first one to abandon it.........
Back in the 1920 or so, all those hard-working Bell Lab engineers/scientists are the true pioneer/inventors in this field. They are creating a whole new technology. I don't see there are any corelation between them and the current designers or copiers.
Please look underneath their SET amp if you know what you are looking at. Poor parts, poor circuit design and poorly design tiny output transformer(mass produced in Taiwan). It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out how it sounds.
The Japanese are constantly refining the SET amp since the mid 60's. French are doing the same since the mid 70's. And the US are doing it recently(early 90's). Don't you think they are just a baby!
Thanks for reminding me to crawl back to my hole.

May be you should go out from your hole more often.

What are the dimensions of these holes? Do they have good acoustic properties? Perhaps I should abandon my listening room and get me a hole.