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Finally stepping into the hobby after 30 years of watching from the sidelines

Ok, so I hope you are all ok with a longwinded post from a first time user of the forum.  I have been obsessed with vinyl and tubes since my dad played records for me as a 5 year old.  My wife and I are finally in a place that we can take the leap into the scene.  We want to grow our system over time and may even create 2-3 systems along the way as we have a bed and breakfast where we want to make analog part of the theme. 

We have made up our mind that our first speakers will be Vandersteen 2CE sigs.  That is about as far as we have gotten.  We definitely want to power them with tubes and have very little idea of where to start.  Obviously the mainstream option would be a Mcintosh mc275 and our local HiFi salesman would LOVE to sell us a pair of those.  However, we know that there are several cheeper/better options out there and would love some input from the board.  We'd like to keep the first amp under $3,000, but we aren't locked into that.  Keep in mind that we are ok starting with a single amp and then adding a second one along the way to mono them.  Also, we would love some help with a table/arm/cartridge!  One with an integrated phono stage is fine to start with and we would again be open to upgrading and adding a stand alone phono stage later on.  

We will be doing some electrical work soon to run a 40 amp fuse to the BnBs espresso machine and would be open to setting up a dedicated line for our main system at that time so that we can have clean power.  Has any one had any experience with this?  Any ideas or recommendations that you may have would be a big help here! 

Thank you all in advance, and we are really excited to finally be part of the scene! 
cottguy
cottguy's avatar
cottguy OP
56 posts
 
@inna Do you think the Spacedeck will suffice?  Also, I just checked out DeVore and Coincident...beautiful looking speakers.  I'll look deeper into them tonight.  I know VAC is a phenominal company, I'll just have to find a decent used unit.  The new stuff is out of reach for now.  

@frogman We want to go with tubes for 3 main reasons.  I have been in love with them since I was a kid.  Personally, I think the sound that you get is more musical, cozy, warm, what ever you want to call it.  Sometimes people who like tubes struggle to put it into words.  The third reason is that they look cool as hell.  Remember, we are running a bed and breakfast.  Any one can do this and make a little bit of money and people could be a little happy that they saved money on a high end hotel and had a clean comfortable bed to sleep in.  Or, we can deliver a unique experience that they will remember for ever.  We want to deliver the latter.  A simple box on a rack doesn't really scream unique.  But glowing tubes when the lights are low does.  Personally, the last reason isn't why I want to run tubes, but it doesn't hurt the image of our business.    
mapman's avatar
mapman
22,793 posts
 
Could you do corner placement of speakers? How about Klipschorns and a nice arc or vac tube integrated amp? Or a Rogue Cronus Magnum?   Or even a Glow Audio Amp 1 or Decware   Zen triode integrated?  That would be very nice, practical for good listening throughout the room and aesthetically pleasing perhaps as well. Corner placement can be a great thing to help give a system a nice bass boost and keep them out of the way and blend in to the room naturally.
cottguy's avatar
cottguy OP
56 posts
 
I'll have to post pics of the room so that you guys can see the challenges of our space.  Corner placement isn't an option.  We have two potential options and this is why this decision is getting to be so tough.  If I go for what we set out to do, the speakers will be placed about 10 feet from the seating area.  The area in front of the speakers would account for 1/3 of the length of the room.  That means that there is about 26-28 feet behind the speakers.  At the widest point and in the listening area, the room is about 20 feet wide.  Our ceilings are 11 ft.  We are considering going with a smaller system that would be in the same area but with a different speaker placement.  The speakers would be perpendicular to the original placement and the listening area would be approximately 15 feet wide by 20 deep.  The speakers would end up being about 12-15 feet from the sweet spot.  In this configuration there would be no wall on the right hand side as you look at the speakers.  Obviously none of this is optimal.  Knowing that doing this right with our original speaker placement, we may have to spend a lot more than we want to at this point in time.  This is why we are considering the second option.  With this option, we would opt to go for a higher efficiency speaker with a sub(s) and run a lower output class A integrated or Mono set up.  The idea here is that we have a system that we can use for the BnB and move it to a bedroom when we can sink the cash into a proper large room system.  Lots to think about.  I'll try to get pics up tomorrow so that you can see what I'm talking about.         
mapman's avatar
mapman
22,793 posts
 
Pics would definitely help. The trick is always to get the right speakers for the placement in the room and then the best amp possible to drive them. From your description I can understand the appeal of the Vandersteens. Something tube amp friendly using 8-10 inch bass drivers and higher dispersion, Maybe even something more radial or omnidirectional for the largest possible sweet spot might be in order.  Are you familiar at all with the Ohm Walsh Speakers?    I could see those working quite well.   The question would be how large would be needed.  
raymonda
855 posts
 
A pair of JM Labs Mini Utopia's just popped up for sale here. The appear to be in very good shape, sound fantastic and are tube friendly.

I run a pair of Micro's on 60 watts of triode. They barely need subs. However, I do run subs with them. 

Couple these with a nice integrated tube amp and you're on your way to audio heaven. Seriously!


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