What's the greatest bargain in SET these days?

Ait ;
I have thought the same thing concerning the DIY route . But some of us are just not able to do it . :-(

Happy Tunes

Mikirob, I thought about the old SEDs as well. I heard them in a friend's
Manley and they sounded pretty good. It would be interesting to hear Israel's
thoughts on tubes for the dynamo, so if you contact him, please let me know
what he says. PM if you like. I also thought about the Psvane blacks. Sophia
just released an EL34 a couple days ago. I thought I'd wait long enough to
see what people are saying about that tube before spending a lot on
something else. Good NOS EL34s are getting a little scarce, and pricey.
My Franks came with NOS GE 5U4GBs. I thought about trying one one those
in the dynamo, and I also have a couple of JJ EL34s that came with the inspire
amp, so no harm in trying them. I think they might come from the same
plant as the Groove Tubes, not sure.
My guess is those Sylvanias will be a substantial upgrade over the stock
tubes.
Charles has been a faithful Apostle of the Coincident gear for a long time,
while being very knowledgable about other gear as well. He is a gentleman
and a scholar-- a real asset to this forum. In addition to the reviews on
Coincident gear, which aren't all that plentiful, reading his posts really
convinced me to take the plunge on my CSL preamp. Once that happened,
the Triumphs and Franks were just a matter of time.

Rebbi,

Check out the Tubelab SSE, which stands for Simple Single Ended. There is a Tubelab Forum on DIYAudio.com, with lots of tips and George is a great guy, too.

Reports are they are excellent sounding amps.

Brownsfan,
Thanks.
The respect and appreciation is mutual.
Charles,

If you are using low powered (ie. 2-10 wpc) SET and SEP amps, they work better with speakers of higher sensitivity. ie. closer to 100 dB instead of closer to 90 dB.

Don't put a lightweight in the ring against a heavyweight!

If that is all the power you have, try some horns. If you don't want to buy the big dollar stuff, try some Klipsch Heresy, Forte, Chorus, Cornwall, Lascala, Klipschorn, etc. Better the speaker impedance is linear too, othewise there will be audible frequency response issues that you may not be able to overcome with speaker placement.

OP: with your De Capos I would look at 20 wpc as the minimum, which will give you some leeway with different recordings, volume levels and room placements.