On my stradivari, I preferred tubes for voices but SS for dynamics, bass.
Cary 211FE was my tube amp
Classe M600 was my SS amp
Cary 211FE was my tube amp
Classe M600 was my SS amp
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- 11 posts total
What do you prefer? Tube or solid state? I rotate through amps on my Strads. Bryston 28BSST2's or Hegel H30 with a low output impedance tube preamp, like my CJ GAT, is superb on mine - superb control and soundstage. Strads need power to show their best but quality is better than quantity. I suspect the Elipsa SE are similar. If you want a sanely priced option, the Job Monos will be awesome. I had the Job 225 on my Strads and while, for the majority of my listening it was fine, I do feel the more powerful Job monos will be better. Tube gear is buyer's choice. Believe it or not, one amp that gets a fair amount of use on my Strads is a Jolida Fusion 3502 with KT-150's (under $2K retail). A wonderful combo that will not break the bank. My taste runs more towards Conrad Johnson. Buy what you can afford. Audio Research and McIntosh are another superb combo depending on your taste. Do you have a budget you could tell us? We could point you in a better direction. What is your preamp? Or are you planning on amp and preamp at the same time? |
pkelly1504 Hi, Really nice speakers you have there, but to get them to sing right, especially in the bass, for these Sonus Faber’s you need an amp that can almost double it’s wattage from 8ohm to 4ohm to 2ohm (eg: 100w 200w 400w) And that means amps that deliver hefty current. No tube/ Mosfet/Class D amp for these. You need big amp/s that have "bi-polar (bjt)" output stages this type of amp will do these speaker justice. As right through the bass and upper bass they are 2.5ohm, and at the low bass with 4ohms and -50degrees phase angle load (EPG), this can look like 1.5ohms to the amp. Just a snippet from the Stereophile test results on these speakers. "With an impedance magnitude that drops to 2.5 ohms throughout the upper bass (fig.1). There is also a punishing combination of 4 ohms magnitude and –50 ° electrical phase angle at 70Hz that will suck gobs of current from the amplifier." joeinid has mentioned two amps I believe that have the goods to deliver big current. Big earlier Krell stereos or mono blocks Dan Agostino designed ones. And my favourite would be the Parasound JC1 mono blocks which you can user adjust the Class A bias with a switch, cool for hot days class A for cold days. Stereophile in the review above used Mark Levinson No.33, Boulder 860 and the Parasound JC1’s these are all bi-polar (bjt) output amps. Cheers George |
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