Merlin TSM with Manley Mahi-Mahi?

Map,

Yes, in general, people seem to think that the TSM's particularly sing with tubes. Just trying to find out if anybody has specific experience with the Manley's.

Reb, from what I recall, at least on paper, the weak link with what you have currently may be the match of the Manley pre-amp to that particular BC amp, with 20K input impedance as I recall. It may sound fine as is but I would expect things would be more articulate and controlled with a Class D amp designed to work well with tube preamps. These typically have 60K input impedance unbalanced or higher. I'd expect a tube amp to provide similar benefit and mate well with the tube pre-amp.

Bobby likes Manley. EL84s are wonderful tubes - so I can't see why the Mahi Mahi would not be an excellent amp for driving the TSMs - it is certainly enough power, and switching to triode might also work nicely for small scale acoustic music. Oh, and the Shrimp will work alot better with the input impedance of a tube amp.

From manley website:

Mahi Input Impedance: 110 Kohm

That alone will make a difference in the sound for the better I would wager relative to the BC S300 (20 Kohm I believe, though stock Icepower is only 10K ohm as I recall), perhaps more so even than tubes versus SS or Class D technology in of itself.

BC ref series Icepower amps cost more but have 100Kohm unbalanced input impedance. I can vouch that this works extremely well with an ARC sp-16 tube pre-amp, which is why I believe BC ref series and others like Wyred do mods to stock Icepower for this, ie to work better with tube pre-amps.

BTW, I have strongly considered the Manley Stringray integrated as the next amp I would try in my second (A/V) system if I ever decide to invest more in that rig. I always use a sub on that rig which makes using a tube amp with my various inherently tube unfriendly speakers like the Dyns and OHMs a viable option, I think.