Thiel CS 3.6 amplifier selection Monarchy SM 70?

Mais61, If your looking for a pair of mono amps with XLR inputs to adequately drive your 3.6's on a tight budget, you might want to keep your eyes open here for a pair of used B&K M200's. Caveat; not all B&K M200's came with balanced inputs, and B&K recently went out of business, so factory support won't be there. On the other hand these were fairly simple, yet robust designs that other outfits used to modify. I would think you could find outside help in the unlikely event that you needed them serviced. While these wouldn't be my top choice as the best sounding amps for your Thiels, they're darn close. Recently they've been selling for about $800 a pair here on Audiogon, and at that price are an absolute steal.

Thanks UnSound. I'll check into the B&K's too.

Masi61 - Sam Kim has been building amplifiers since he was sixteen years old back in the fifties. He's a Guru.

His partner Steve, who handles sales, will tell you stuff, like he told me, that simply sounds like hype. What hooked me was the money back guarantee if I didn't like how it sound.

Sam mainly builds Integrated Amps using old chasis' in excellent condition. That eliminates the high chassis cost that small boutique companies pass on to you. He specializes in push-pull circuits in full triode, and with all types of output tubes. He builds his amps from his head, so no schematics! To answer your question, it's from scratch, so what are your requirements?

Sam's signature designs are low watt for higher efficiency speakers. The Thiels were a challenge. Sam knew that they were 86 dB, but did not know their impedence of 2.5 to 4 ohms. His first amp utlizing EL34 tubes and a 4 ohm tap was unsucessful as the Thiels sucked the headroom out of the tubes. He re-designed the amp with 6550 tubes and the 3 ohm tap that made all the difference. The Thiels play loud for me with the volume at twelve o'clock.

I love tubes and I love the Thiels. When I first auditioned them the dealer sold Krell, BAT, and CJ. I chose the CJ over the Krell amp. But that's me!!! Sam's amp completely blows away my old CJ.

How big is your room? If it's huge, you may have a loudness issue. You can probably expect to pay about $3K for the amp, but keep in mind that this is preamp plus power amp.

Good luck, and listen to what the other members have recommended.

Masi61, an update, but first a correction--The SE-100 is no longer available, and the SE-160 and SE-250 poweramps are the hybrids.

The SM70 Pro is a stereo amp that's bridgeable via the RCA or the XLR/balanced input. In stereo it's 25WPC into 8 and 40WPC into 4 Ohms. In mono, it's 80 into 8 and 120 into 4. Also, Mr. Poon has come up with an ingenious (to me, at least) way to wire a biampable speaker to the 2 channels, so if the 3.6s are biwireable, you'll have 80 watts available into 4 Ohms per speaker. You get 2 brand-new amps for $1176 plus shipping. I recently listened for a week to a pair of SM70Ps driving my 89dB-sensitive, 4-Ohm, much-improved Audio physic Avanti IIIs. I thought they sounded quite fine--WARNING...I'm NOT a golden-eared audiofile--but I was still wanting a little more power even tho I do not listen at high levels. So I ordered a pair of...

...SE-160s for $2400. This is the hybrid amp that uses either a 6922/6DJ8 (and lots more) or a 12AT7 (your choice, at least for a while) and a MOSFET output stage, is biased class-A to c. 50 Watts (and that's LOTS of bias current!), and has NO negative feedback whatever. It's rated at 160 Watts into 8 Ohms, 320 into 4, and it's stable into 2. The reviews indicate it sounds a little better overall than the all-solidstate SM70P.

We'll hear what we hear, and I'll post again after they've been running a few days.
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Initial impressions of the SE-160s are quite positive. They're not edgy as far as I can tell after a week; overall they sound quite good. I've compared different 12AT7s in them htis WE and have heard some differences, but all tubes were satisfactory and musical.

I had been driving the Avanti IIIs with 12-Watt SET monoamps, and is spite of the low power, the combination sounded very good. Saturday a friend and I were listening and heard a cymbal simply explode out of the orchestra as I've never heard before. I guess having enough power does make a difference. :-)
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