Magneplanar 1.7 and low power/tube amps

21 watts will lead to unhappiness. If you want to listen to very quiet music, don't waste the money on the 1.7's either. I've tried maggies with 12, 17, 20 & 40 watt amps and was always left wanting more. No bass for starters and they break up way too easily.
I like Maggies but not without about 200wpc or more...

Thanks for the info folks. yes i can cart the LFD down to try it as its not a big unit. The AS is too big to take. If the LFD handles them the way i like it may have to do. I'd just like a set of speakers that i can pair up with the AS also as it is a very very nice amp. Maybe the Maggies are not it..

I would say that I didn't like my Maggies playing at low volumn. I think both pair liked to play large scale music in a large way. But that's just me.

We demo'd a bit of my usual listening CD's, including the stuff i really enjoy listening to and which is unfortunately poorly recorded. The volume was not too high, close to what i would play when i have free range at home in my current setup. I am going to take the LFD down there and give it a whirl to see how it stands up. In both cases these amps i have drive better than the wattage suggests but i am not expecting them to drive at high dB. The Maggie's really impressed with the soundstage and clarity. It would be great if i can get enough out of them with one of my amps.

I've MEASURED my Maggies with a DVM. Not the most accurate, but carefully watching I can catch the PEAK voltage go by. Based on that, I add 20% for meter latency and use 4.5 ohms to compute power. For my 1.6s, at mid-loud / comfortable, I've never seen more than 10vac go by, even with the +20%.

This works out to 2.2amps at 22 watts.

During normal TV watching, I've never seen more than about 6v, with the 20% fudge factor.

I'm guessing that 15 clean watts, with 3db headroom may be on the 'low' side of even minimal. I would DOUBLE my 22 watts, add another 'fudge' and say 50 watts MINIMUM for any meaningful music listening. DOUBLE again and you'd be at minimal SAFE power.

I know, I'm nuts, but my ICE amp puts out 500+ per side into 4ohms, at probably 50 or 60 volts. I'm scared to test it!