What's the greatest bargain in SET these days?

Hi Tubegroover, early days with this amp but here are my impressions so far. The first thing that I immediately noticed was a beautiful tranparency. Instruments at the back of the soundstage have far more detail than my push pull amps. Instruments/sounds hang in space surrounded by lots of air - very cool. Liquid midrange but not syrupy - excellent detail. Tuneful bass and extended/sweet highs. Dynamic. I've listened to mostly Jazz so far, not sure if the amps will rock in my room yet, it's pretty large (21' x 24'). Listened to Kenny Burrel - Midnight Blue tonight. Toms, cymbals, guitar all floating in space on a black background. Beautiful tone on the guitar.

The amps run VERY hot!! Could be an issue in a small room, serious space heaters. Build quality is good. I haven't opened the hood yet but Vlad has a good reputation.

I'm going to pick up a pair of good NOS 6sl7's, maybe a nice 40's Tungsol, I currently have what looks like a later RCA in there with a very nice 40's Syl VT-231. I've read that the input tube has the most influence on the sound. Down the road I'll look at upgrading the coupling caps as well.

Nice synergy with the De Capo's. I listen at about 85db's generally. The amps seem to cruise at that volume. 90 to 95 and they sound a bit taxed. Again, my room is pretty big though. Very happy so far!

Smctigue1,
Well, with the Torii's putting out substantially more juice than the Rachael's 6 watts, it sounds like I avoided some disappointment with my De Capo's, although my room's only 11 x 16 x 8, so it's smaller than yours.

Smctique1, I wouldn't be surprised if the Decware's disappointing performance is output transformer related. What you described can be traced to that and a less than robust power supply. Brownsfan didn't have this problem with the Dynamo driving the very same speaker. There's no substitute for good iron in a tube amplifier.

I read that SET amps are more prone to limits in frequency response (ie not necessarily reasonably flat from 20-20K) than most other amp architectures. Low end extension is without doubt where most power is required. Its basic physics. Limited low end extension might help account for better performance at higher listening volumes in some cases. Transformer and power supply build quality matter as well no doubt, but a watt is still a watt and can only go so far.

The Coincident SET sis advertise 20-20K frequency response in their specs as I recall. I would think that kind of low end extension would up teh ante in terms of needed speaker efficiency and overall size needed to deliver flat response down to the usual 20 hz or so from a SET amp.

That's just what I get out of it. Maybe some others more experienced can help clarify.

DECware website also shows a FR graph for their set indicating extended flat response using a "real speaker load" (paraphrasing) but I did not see where the exact speaker load used to produce the graph was indicated. I suspect it was very large and very efficient. Anyone know?