Amp recommendations for Tannoy Canterbury SE

Maril555, thanks a lot for your inputs. I have very high regard for Jim Smith and the fact that he had bought the same speakers also motivated me to go for the Canterburies. You are absolutely right, I would have loved to hire Jim Smith, however I am outside US and am based in Dubai and hence not practical.

I am right now going thru the "Get Better Sound" Book and DVD to position the speakers properly. Hopefully I can get it better...

Sksos1, you have pointed out another important area - the gain in the preamp. In my case, I don't have a preamp and also just switched from Ayon CD5 to Oppo BDP-95 to play directly into the amps. This could be a problem area too and I need to revert back to CD5 and play with the gain settings on the CD Player to see the effect.

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IMO, the Canterburys sound pretty good set up any old way. But they do benefit from voicing, right down to very small adjustments.

It's unlike any other speaker I've worked with in that way.

Once broken in, they are so musically compelling, it's almost like, "why fix it if it ain't broke?"

But once they are dialed in, it's all over for most folks - their "desert island" speaker has arrived.

Re amplification, I've had good luck with amps in the 30 watt region, both SS & tube. The first pair I voiced a few years ago had a 60 watt amplifier on them.

I'd like to hear if a more powerful amp might sound even better but then we get back to "if it ain't broke..." ☺
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Canterburys sound good with both solid state and tubes, imo. I wonder how a bi-amp configuration would sounds with tubes on the midrange/tweeter, and solid state for the bass.

I have been listening to Tannoy GRF Pro's and 15" Monitor Golds in Canterbury sized cabinets for over 15 years. In my view tubes are not the way to go - I've had Futterman OTL's, Quicksilvers, Conrads, EAR etc high power, low power , pentode, triode, ultralinear 6550's, EL34's, 8417's, 211's etc. The ear opening experience I had was listening to von Karajan's Beethoven 5th on the GRF Pro's with 500 watts of heavily modified Perreaux 5150B - as in the only thing original was the power supply and mosfets. Even though the speakers are hugely efficient the big power amp's headroom and control over the speakers clearly enabled the relentlessness of this performance to be communicated which I never previously heard. My supposition is that high power amps provide better control over the driver, Tannoys own reference amplifier was a 250wpc mosfet amp. I have come to the view that if you value speed and timing high current solid state is the way to go, I use a 50watt high current ss amp. I would look at something like MBL's or Pass Labs.
I would also echo the views above, speaker positioning and angling adjustments of even 1/2 an inch can yield significant changes in openness, balance and bottom end.