Best Amp to drive my Apogee Stages?


Greetings all.
I am wondering if I might get some good suggestions from anyone who might be firmiliar with the Apogee Stages. I have owned them for quite awhile, but due to blowing up my Krell (300i)intergrated amplifier more than once now (a $400 bill to fix it each time) I beleive that it is time to buy the right amplifier for the job. I need more power for sure, but my wallet is light these days. This means that I must minimize my purchase to something definitly under $2K and even more like $1200 price range. This seems to limit me quite a bit in my findings, but I am wondering if I might have missed something with my research so far? I have reviewed Krell, Levinson, Pass Labs and Threshold to date. Each have older options in my price range, but I am not certain if any will work better with my speakers?

Any thoughts out there?

Thank you in advance.

-LoveItLoud
loveitloud
Loveitloud, The KST 100 is a lower priced amplifier and it is not the quality of the KSA series amplifiers by Krell which were made during the same time.
The H2O 100 costs $2k. It will run the Stage with all the control a high power amp gives it. You can get all the tube warmth, and depth separation by choosing another component with tubes. I just have tubes in my CD player, and that is what determines the sound.

www.iceh2oaudio.com/images/H20...
Rrog: My guess is that the Manely should mate well with the Stage.

I am sorry I do not recall our conversation. Apologies. Drop me an email if you have any specific question. With regard to building speakers, I did not build any per se but I moded several Apogees. Two noteworthy efforts are the "Centaur-Fullrange" which combine the Fullrange woofer with Centaur-Major mid/tw ribbon to make a "new" speaker. This remains my main speaker even though these days I am listening to the original Fullrange.

The second project, which shows my love for the Stage, was to create a "butterfly", that is stacked Stages. Each side contains two Stages with the top one upside down such that the Mid/high tweeters of the two Stages are aligned vertically. That project required some more efforts and crossover mod and I abandoned the idea as the bass was not better than that of the Fullrange. I might try it again though when my mod bug starts biting me again.
Gallant_diva:
I have never heard anything finer than the Apogee Fullrange. Why play with stages when you have the REAL thing?

-LIL