Solid state to tube

Have the speakers ever been recapped? If not, start there. 20 year old caps are well past their sell by date. Replace ALL with polypropylene or PTFE.

Going to a dealer is a waste of time as they do not have your speakers, cables, room or the rest of the system. You might hear differences, but they will likely not travel home.

If the speakers are ported, some tube amps may not mate well due to the impedance curve.

I’d add the VTA gear from Tubes4Hifi to the list....really excellent stuff that’s fairly affordable.

It's not really excellent stuff. See VTA M-125. People have all kinds of problems with them and have written after ZERO support from Tubes4FiHi. If you complain on their forum, they axe your account. A lot of their advice is just plain wrong!

@ghdprentice 

Thank you and likewise. You certainly have an audio system to be proud of and I’m sure does justice to your music reproduction.

Charles 

Linear tube Audio all the way in this case for good value  to do the job well. Read their tech literature to see why. Ref 3a speakers are not all that tube friendly as they may seem on paper from what I have gathered over the years from owners. Results could vary widely with various tube amps.

@ecpninja

on the Reference 3a Speakers website they openly tout that their speakers are very easy to drive and tube amplifier friendly. In fact, two amplifiers that they recommend for use with their speakers (Listed on site) are lower powered tube amplifiers. Here’s an old post regarding your speakers.

I heard both speakers at the Stereophile show in 2002.
The distributor for Reference 3A A/Bed the speakers.
He was using Antique Sound Labs 845 tube amps and an Antique Sound tube preamp.

The Reference 3a da capo’s were nice sounding monitors.
But the l’integral nouveau are much better speakers.
The main difference was the l’integral nouveau were much more fuller sounding and the bass was superior then the da Capo’s.
The l’integral nouveau have a very smooth sound with a sweet midrange and the bass is great.
Those were one of my favorite speakers at the show that year.

If you want no tube hassles, go for a model that uses 300B’s.  The new Western Electrics come with a 5 year warranty.  They are $1,500 a pair, but well worth it IMO in terms of SQ.