@jbhiller
What you are up against is that to make more power, SETs have to sacrifice bandwidth. 300b amps are at about the limit of what can be considered 'hifi'; even then its very difficult to get them to go from 20Hz to 20KHz and most of them don't.
Because a horn system is about the only thing that has enough efficiency (or in some cases, single driver full range speakers like Lowther) to work with a 300b, this isn't too much of a problem because most horns and full range drivers can't make much bass below 40-60 Hz anyway.
Now of course you will hear of a lot of people running speakers that are less than the sort of efficiency you need (+99dB) but they really aren't getting the best performance out of their amps as a result unless they are listening in a smaller room. To really take advantage of what SETs bring to the table, you really don't want to push them past about 20% or so of full power, otherwise they start sounding 'dynamic' but this is entirely caused by distortion. BTW, once you know this fact, its easier to hear that such is the case so I may have ruined it for you- if so, my apologies.
The ear uses higher ordered harmonics to sense sound pressure, and SETs generate more higher ordered harmonic distortions once they start getting over about 20-25% of full power. Since music has lots of transients, as you turn up the power these harmonics initially are showing up on the transients of the music- and that is how they sound more 'dynamic' than one would expect for a lower powered amp.
If you really need more power (if a more efficient speaker is out of the question), IMO/IME you are far better off looking for a lower powered push-pull tube amplifier. You'll hear more detail and bandwidth won't be a problem. Most such amps won't be as lush since they don't make as much 2nd order harmonic distortion, but overall they stand a chance of being more musical than a larger SET.
What you are up against is that to make more power, SETs have to sacrifice bandwidth. 300b amps are at about the limit of what can be considered 'hifi'; even then its very difficult to get them to go from 20Hz to 20KHz and most of them don't.
Because a horn system is about the only thing that has enough efficiency (or in some cases, single driver full range speakers like Lowther) to work with a 300b, this isn't too much of a problem because most horns and full range drivers can't make much bass below 40-60 Hz anyway.
Now of course you will hear of a lot of people running speakers that are less than the sort of efficiency you need (+99dB) but they really aren't getting the best performance out of their amps as a result unless they are listening in a smaller room. To really take advantage of what SETs bring to the table, you really don't want to push them past about 20% or so of full power, otherwise they start sounding 'dynamic' but this is entirely caused by distortion. BTW, once you know this fact, its easier to hear that such is the case so I may have ruined it for you- if so, my apologies.
The ear uses higher ordered harmonics to sense sound pressure, and SETs generate more higher ordered harmonic distortions once they start getting over about 20-25% of full power. Since music has lots of transients, as you turn up the power these harmonics initially are showing up on the transients of the music- and that is how they sound more 'dynamic' than one would expect for a lower powered amp.
If you really need more power (if a more efficient speaker is out of the question), IMO/IME you are far better off looking for a lower powered push-pull tube amplifier. You'll hear more detail and bandwidth won't be a problem. Most such amps won't be as lush since they don't make as much 2nd order harmonic distortion, but overall they stand a chance of being more musical than a larger SET.