I'm going to buy my first tube amp. I need honest blunt opinions


 

 

Recommendations please. I am thinking of dipping my toes in the tube amp water.  For the longest time I have been tempted to buy a modest tube amp to run my Monitor Gold 300’s at 90db.

I’ve been toying around, researching the different characteristics of SET, class A, class AB, B Ultralinear tube amps for months. It’s a bit much. As far as the reviewers go, they are too vague. They are afraid to be upfront honest.

Sources are a Parasound JC 3+, a Innous ZENith Mk3, and a Oppo going to a Benchmark DAC, then all go to a Benchmark LA 4 preamp that will feed the new amp.

My room is 16 x16. The speakers have a 12-foot spread. I sit 14 feet back, so it’s not that big of a room.

I have narrowed it down to four candidates.

A used Canary Audio M90 300B Tube Amp at 24RMS,300B push-pull stereo triode Class A $4,000

A used Jadis Orchestra Black, 40 RMS, Class B $4,000

A 16-year-old, Used Cary Audio Six Pac Monoblock’s, 50 triode watts A/AB $2,000

A new Dynaco by WILL VINCENT 35RMS Ultralinear $2,300

 

marshinski15

Looking at the Stereophile measurements you should take care in choosing a tube amp as the Gold 300s look like a bit of a harder load than one might initially expect.  Here’s an excerpt from John Atkinson’s measurements section…

Although Monitor Audio specifies the Gold 300's sensitivity as 90dB/W/m, my estimate was almost 3dB lower, at 87.3dB(B)/2.83V/m, perhaps due to the fact that the Gold 300's impedance is specified as 4 ohms. (An input of 2.83V is equivalent to 2W into 4 ohms.) The impedance magnitude (fig.1, solid trace) does stay close to 4 ohms from the upper bass through to the mid-treble, with minimum values of 3.7 ohms at 117Hz and 3.57 ohms at 1kHz. There is a current-hungry combination of 5 ohms and –39° electrical phase angle (dotted trace) at 77Hz, and the phase angle exceeds +40° above 10kHz, presumably due to the inductance of the MPD tweeter's drive system. The Monitor Audio needs to be partnered with an amplifier that is comfortable driving low impedances.

A “modest tube amp” might not get the job done here, so make sure to do your homework before fully committing.  In this case you might consider going with a tubed preamp rather than an amp to get some of that tube goodness.  Don’t mean to be a bummer here but thought I’d share this info in case you weren’t already aware.

 

I have had several different tube amps over the years.  40 and 50 watt EL34 and 6l6 amps.   They drove speakers around 90 dB sens in a room about 17 X 15    
 

My latest amp is a 40 watt Solid State amp and it can drive 86 dB sens speakers to pretty decent volumes cleanly in roughly the same size room. 
 

That said I would avoid low powered SET amps with those speakers and look at something 40 or 50 watts with tubes that are readily available is what I would suggest 

I have a 300b and it sounds beautiful but only with my Forte.  It just doesn’t have the power to play low to moderately low sensitivity speakers