My own take on using tubes with 3.5s (I’ve used a VPI 299D integrated with mine for about three or four years now), is that component quality is as important as lots of power.
There were only 100 299Ds ever made (it was a vanity project around the time of Harry Weisfeld’s retirement) so it’s a fair bet that I’m the only guy out there who has ever used one on 3.5s.
However, Steve Leung, who hand built the 299D and designed it in collaboration with Harry, used a lot of the same internals as Primaluna deploys, including the same transformers, resistors, capacitors, point to point wiring, triode/ultra linear switching etc, so a Primaluna amp would be the easier comparative audition.
The 3.5s are great at exposing any weakness in the system, of course, but even with four EL34s in the 299D, there’s more than enough power to control these speakers really effectively.
In fact I nowadays much prefer the 34s to the optional KT150s that I occasionally install for kicks and giggles. The 150s are, of course, about as powerful as audio tubes get, but the 34s are way more musical and I find there’s no shortage of clout when using them.
I have Adcom and B&K solid state amps waiting in the wings for the most part and neither of them bests the tubes. In fact it’s really not even close.
The point of writing this is to reinforce recent comments made about how well 3.5s work with tubes. I do believe, however, that a reasonably modern design with robust wide bandwidth output/toroidal transformers is probably critical.
There were only 100 299Ds ever made (it was a vanity project around the time of Harry Weisfeld’s retirement) so it’s a fair bet that I’m the only guy out there who has ever used one on 3.5s.
However, Steve Leung, who hand built the 299D and designed it in collaboration with Harry, used a lot of the same internals as Primaluna deploys, including the same transformers, resistors, capacitors, point to point wiring, triode/ultra linear switching etc, so a Primaluna amp would be the easier comparative audition.
The 3.5s are great at exposing any weakness in the system, of course, but even with four EL34s in the 299D, there’s more than enough power to control these speakers really effectively.
In fact I nowadays much prefer the 34s to the optional KT150s that I occasionally install for kicks and giggles. The 150s are, of course, about as powerful as audio tubes get, but the 34s are way more musical and I find there’s no shortage of clout when using them.
I have Adcom and B&K solid state amps waiting in the wings for the most part and neither of them bests the tubes. In fact it’s really not even close.
The point of writing this is to reinforce recent comments made about how well 3.5s work with tubes. I do believe, however, that a reasonably modern design with robust wide bandwidth output/toroidal transformers is probably critical.