Looking To Match A Tube Amp With A Pair Of Audio Note AN-K/Spe

Iron is indeed the king with tube gear, for both pushpull and single-ended amps.  There is hardly anything new and novel in tube design, so most of it comes down to  parts quality, build quality and voicing by the designer. 

You are entirely correct; there is very little novel in the area of tube design (unless you count ss assist). Most ’designers’ simply optimise component values for their particular application of a certain pre-documented circuit, or at the most give it a mild tweak - and sometimes they don’t even get that right. Ironically. some recent ’advances’ have have occured due to the re- examination of long forgotten texts.

There have been, and are very few true innovators coming up with novel ideas and making advances in the field. And I certainly don’t count myself among them.

Considering a Decware Tori II MkV for my K's. Atmasphere's comments were influencing on this thread. Have certainly decided that a 20-40W pentode design is a good path. Keeping in mind the K's are in a 12x26 room go with KT 66, 77, or 6L6 for an "EL-84 tactile and immediate" kind of sound? Other considerations are C-J classic 62, and BAT VK-56. There's a listing on Canuck Audio Mart for a pair of Master Sound (Italy) 845 monobloc's. Another worthy consideration? -Scott

Have certainly decided that a 20-40W pentode design is a good path. Keeping in mind the K's are in a 12x26 room go with KT 66, 77, or 6L6 for an "EL-84 tactile and immediate" kind of sound?

If it were me I'd be looking for an amp with Ultra-Linear operation since UL allows the output section to have the same linearity as a triode. Or find an amp that is actually triode. Push-pull amps that are triode, even using Directly Heated Triodes do exist.

Ultra-linear is nice since the power tubes usually used are easy to find. Since you don't need all that much power a 6L6 or EL34 based amp would certainly do the job.