High eff speakers? Sonata III, Super III, OR ???

Newbee I'll look into that bit. I didn't think impedance matching was that important between amp & speakers though. thanks for the heads up.

Metralla
I appreciate the notes on the SE III. I'm in no hurry at all, and might wind up with something other than the two I mentioned. I believe $3k is fair enough a figure, and perhaps some less depending on ownership, age, etc. some do say otherwise though and that's fine too. It's a good thing for equipment to keep it's value... so long as the value is descriminatory, and not simply due to the make and model. Background does play a part IMO.

Again, I'm not dead set on the notion of either a Sonata or Super, I just threw them out there as I had some familiarity with them thus far.

Any other suggestions on them or on different makes & models are certainly needed and appreciated.

If it's a help, I'm inclined to go with Art, Cary, Canary, or VAC by way of amp. Perhaps others, but I'm comfortable with them as my short list.

Any of the klipsch Heritage series

If vintage doesn't scare you, you ought to consider Altec Lansing Models 14,17,18,19. These can be bought for $2000 or less. I own Model 17s with the 604 duplex and have been enjoying them for over 18 months with no thoughts of selling them. Mine are from the mid 70's, but they do lots of things very well. Most range from 96-103db/watt/meter.

Newbee, thanks for the vote of confidence... even if you did "out" me about those dirty posts of mine.

;-)

Okay, both the Silverline Sonatina III and Coincident Super Eclipse III are probably excellent. I say "probably" only because I can't recall for sure whether I've heard either model, but I do like both brands.

Coincident tends to have smoother impedance curves than Silverline. I have't seen impedance curves on either of these particular models, so that's a generalization. But the Silverlines usually have impedance curves that "zig" where the frequency response curves "zag" - so that if there is any rise in response at the impedance peaks due to amplifier/speaker impedance interaction with a low damping factor SET or OTL amp, the frequency response curve will be nudged in the direction of being more, rather than less, flat.

Silverline speakers tend to be on the warm and forgiving side. Coincidents tend to be more neutral, more likely to "out" a bad recording like Newbee with my dirty posts.

Now my personal prejudices lead me to place a higher priority on radiation pattern uniformity than most people do, and eyeballing these two the Sonatina III looks to me like it would have the edge in that area.

Somewhere I stumbled across a rule-of-thumb regarding high efficiency speakers and low power amps - to the effect that you want enough power to get a good 102 dB out of the speakers on peaks. So with 92-93 dB speakers, that's 8-10 watts. You must have done your homework, Blindjim.

The Altecs mentioned by Wwwrecords are also very good speakers. I'm more familiar with the Model 14 and Model 19 than the others, and in my opinion they're very competitive even today.

I have a 92 dB, 8 ohm floorstander that might interest you. Shoot me an e-mail if you'd like details.

Best of luck to you, Blindjim.

Duke

ps - Tvad, what did you end up with?