Which Amp for Magnepan MG 3.6/R?

Hi Tireguy!

You have reached a very expensive crossroads in the design and development of your system. Because you are not using an active preamp, but instead are running the BAT VK500 directly off your Audio Aero Capitole CD player, you will experience high transparency and detail perhaps at the cost of harmonic body and some loss of soundstage width and depth. To preserve your transparency and detail to a large degree while increasing body, texture, and atmosphere, a tube amplifier would be in order. The Wolcot amp would be a good choice, although I have not seen or heard one. It will set you back by a little over nine thousand. The perfect match with your Maggies would be a VTL MB750, which offers 360 watts triode into a 4 ohm load. I have heard this amp with the Magnepan 3.6/R along with a VAC Renaissance preamp ($28,200), and it was an awesome combination, as one would expect. The VTL had been modified at the factory at no additional cost with a premium wire that improved the upper octave air and detail of the unit. Well, at $20,000, it puts this amp out of reach for me, and this monoblock amp is huge! Not only that, it really pumps out a lot of heat; it could easily warm your living room in winter, I kid you not. I made the mistake of putting my head over one of the amps and got a blast of hot air for my ignorance.

Another alternative would be for you to buy a tubed preamp to increase the body and soundstage width and depth of your system. You will notice an increase in texture and atmosphere too at a cost of ultimate detail and transparency, not to mention a slight increase in noise in the form of tube hiss that you will hear on very quiet passages when you sit a little too close to the Maggies.

Another possibility would be to change loudspeakers and/or to buy the Wolcot amp. But keep in mind that the Wolcot amp will cut your available power in half when compared to the BAT VK500.

These are not good alternatives. It's what keeps us changing equipment in a never-ending quest to find the right system.

Best regards,

Artar1- Thanks for the input I think you may be right partially about my complaints being related to the no preamp in my system, I have how ever heard the audio aero run direct in two other systems and they did not have this problem, they were also using tube amps as where I am still using a solid state. I do think a lot of my complaints will be taken care of with the Wolcott's- I think I just made my new years resolution! It is a lot of scratch but I do like these speakers- if I can talk her into doing it I want Jena Labs to make me some custom crossovers using what she knows I can only imagine they would be AMAZING, but for the price I would be better off getting the 20.1's and then when money allows have the crossovers upgraded. Choices choices!, Again thank you for your input ~Tim

I am real late in this discussion but the Maggie 3.6 amplifier question came up a dinner last night. My sister is about to purchase these speakers and I told her about the many choices in amplifiaction..with power being important. My big question is whether she should also consider playing with the bi amp crossover option and use a hefty solid state amp and a tube combination that could give her the best of both worlds.However,the more traditional tube pre amp with ss amp probably makes the most sense. She has a fairly large listening area 30x18x12. Anyone played with different bi amp options as described?

Richa,

You are never too late for this discussion.

The real question is how loud will she be playing her music? Does she want to rock at 100 dB? If so, she will need a lot of power.

My vote is for a very high powered solid state design. She could choose a number of units. By the way, how much is she willing to spend? She might try the Classe CAM 350, Brynston 7B SST, the Parasound Halo JC 1, Pass X250/X350, or BAT VK500. For tubes there is the VTL MB 450.

Bi-amping will be expensive: there is the electronic crossover, two amps, and the extra speaker cable.

I hope this helps.

Woolcott Presence are EXCELLENT with 3.6. Recommend anyone with Woolcotts with Sovtek outputs (which I don't think Woolcott uses anymore) should definitely retube. Electro-harmonix EL34 available @ TheTubeStore.com sound wonderful and are cheap. Also found upgrading 6922s made big difference. (This turned out to be more about Woolcotts than 3.6. Couldn't help it; I think Woolcotts are unmatched at price, and maybe at many times price.) Also found Goetz Python AG2 great match for 3.6 (can only speak how they work with Woolcotts, other amps???).