Need help : Single ended, Low power, SET amps..

Tmcroy, your tube xover (Marchand X126) + Single Ended + Bi-amp to push-pull sounds like a winner. But i don't choose my drivers by their db level. I look for what i believe to be superior drivers. Then i look for an appropriate amp. (i'm a Jadis fan). What are the Jadis?... Twl seems in speakers and amps you have a trade off in every choice you make....What i need is one example of Single Ended, Triode, Push Pull, SET. What i can also do is look at all the tube manufactures web sites and there should be descriptions of their amps, i should have something going then.

Tweek, Single Ended Triode is what SET stands for. S is for Single, E is for Ended, and T is for Triode. A good example of one is the Sun 2A3. Another is the Golden Tube 300B. An example of a SET OTL is the Berning Siegfried. An example of a push-pull tube amp is a Marantz 8B(I think?). An example of push-pull OTL is a Berning ZH270 or a Berning MicroZOTL. Regarding the trade-offs, there is a trade-off in every choice that you make in audio no matter what. Everything has its strengths and weaknesses. No product is perfect, even the megabuck ones.

Thanks TWL. I hope one day that your dream comes true, the ZH270 or is it the Siegfried. I'm staying with the push-pull Jadis.

A very good article regarding single ended amplifiers was written by Peter Qvortrup of Audio Note. Go to
www.audionote.co.uk and click technical on home page. There are two very interesting articles. Of course solid state lovers will surely disagree. Differing opinions is what makes this forum so useful I believe. Get what you can from it and balance it with whatever else you learn. Good luck. As always the proof will be in your ears. :)

Hi Tweek,

Believe it or not, I didn't say JBL just because they are so efficient.

Most hi end people consider the JBL sound is what you get at concerts.
Well sometimes it is, but how would a whole wall of your favourite hi-fi speakers sound, often driven by an "interesting" selection of power amps wired up by people who think fancy cables are snake oil.
Cables being robust so they can be moved 10,000 times is what counts to them - not fancy stranding, teflon or oxygen free!

JBL's are often used in mastering studios. A friend of mine has such a studio and the sound he gets is awesome - of course VERY revealing, which is what SET is like as Twl points out.
If JBL's couldn't get it right - those recordings could never sound right on our hi-fi! (don't assume JBL's are all used for pop recordings either)
Take the best of those drivers (and they are very good, think of the volumes they do, how ruthless the competition is in pro sound and estimate their research budget for yourself), set them up like hi-fi drivers would be and you would be VERY shocked.
I was, and your Jardis gear would be damn fine to drive them - with that much power (even the smallest Jardis) going into speakers of around 100 dB/watt efficiency, bi-amping would be a sonic experement (likely to be rewarding, IMHO) rather than a necesity.

With SET, as with any sort of tube amp, output transformer quality is critical, hence expensive and single ended ones are the hardest to build! Right, = great. Not quite right = oh dear!

If you have pocket deep enough to go 3 way active, how about mosfet or PP tube bass, SET midrange and triode PP trebble? That I think, would be using each type of technology in its strongest area.
Let me know how your hi-fi adventure goes!