Favorite Tube Amps, Reasonably Priced

Rogues are great and have balls out the yang.I picked up a Mesa Baron used fpr cheap and i'll tell 'ya nothing beats tons of tube power.If you can wait fo it to come up used the Baron is terrific in that it can be switched from pentode to single ended in thirds and let's you customize the sound.It is $4K new but I see them going for less than half that all the time.

AMC makes tube amps which I believe are designed in the UK and made in the far east. Their list prices are not much to get excited about, but their gear seems to be highly discounted, especially on ebay. I could not resist this situation and bought their model#cvt2100 which is an 80 watt tube amp using 4 kt88's for $700. It sounded fine, very similar to Quicksilver Mono's that I also own. It was a little more forward in the midrange than the Quicksilvers but it had more extended high's and lows. The only negative I could think of was that the amp had fans and I could barely hear them during quiet passages. Also, because of the fans, you need to give the amp some breathing room. The amp turned on and off with no funny noises and the tubes will probably last a long time due to their being fan cooled. Resetting the bias after changing the tubes was a little tricky-probably best left to a technician.

Hi .. check out the Granite Audio 860.1 mono blocks ... they are supurb .and come with an in home demo program .. www.graniteaudio.com

stephen

I use the new Rogue Audio Tempest Magnum with my Virgos $2695 Integrated. It is a huge step up in quality from the stock tempest with a much larger power supply and output transformers. It renders a huge soundstage with great detail and is able to really kick, if want even more power I would go with the Magnum 120 monos. I find Cary to hideously overpriced and colored to a faulr, I've heard many of their amps in many situations.