What's the greatest bargain in SET these days?

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.

Ddd1,
I am also an advocate for high efficiency easy to drive speakers. If you have followed this thread closely it's very apparent that Brownsfan and other contributors here report excellent results with their deCapo and SET/SEP amplifiers. As I and others have pointed out, simply looking at a amplifier's power specification isn't the whole story. Certainly a "good" quality 20 watt amplifier would be a fine match with this speaker but not necessarily represent "better", a viable alternative, yes. Brownsfan's clear detailed impressions of the Dynamo and deCapo pairing are quite convincing.
I believe that often too much emphasis is on power and not enough
attention given to an amplifie's actual design, built quality and
implementation. Brownsfan said in an earlier post that he could make the
case that his 8 watt Frankenstein SET drove the speaker better than his
500 watt Cary SSamp. In specific situations and pairings this isn't
surprising. Some speakers need more powerful amplifiers to perform their
best. Other speakers need high quality not power quantity to perform at
their best. With my current speakers my 8 watt SET "completely" outperformed my 40 watt push pull in sound quality.8 watts is 1/5 the power of 40 watts however these 8 watts are just superior sounding. Moral of the story, it all depends on individual amp and speaker matching rather than blanket proclamations about power.
Charles,

Charles1dad,
Very helpful synopsis, thanks!