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Tube Amp for Martin Logan Speakers

Hi, I love tube sound through my Martin Logan Aerius-i fronts and Cinema-i center. I currently have a Butler 5150 which is a hybrid, but it busted on me and would cost $700 to fix. I've had china stereo tube amps that were pretty good and gave true tube sound, but not enough drive for higher volumes. I live in condo, so not like I can blast music anyways but still. I got the Butler because I wanted 5 channel tube sound for home theatre (The piercing sound from my Denon 3801 receiver was not pleasant to my ears). It appears there are only three multi-channel tube amps around, from Mcintosh, Butler 5150, and Dared DV-6C. The latter two are hybrids, and the last one was one of the worst tube amps i've ever heard. I have no clue why 6Moons gave the Dared a 2010 award, but maybe it's because it produces only 65W.

So since multichannel tube amps are hard to come by, and they tend to be hybrid, I was thinking maybe it would be best to get three true tube monoblocks to power my fronts. Thing is I wonder if they will be underpowered for my speakers, and not sure which ones are decent for the price. Maybe China made ones would suffice, and they still go for pretty expensive price. I'm wondering if anybody knows of a decent powerful tube monoblock that is affordable, because I can't pay $3000 per block. or maybe best to just repair my Butler. Thing is, I'm not confident that it is reliable. The tubes are soldered in which is weird, and i've taken it to a couple repair guys who both said that the design is not good, because it's very tight inside and more susceptible to being fried from DC voltage areas. it's too sensitive.

Any suggestions for tube monoblocks, even if china made ones? the holy grail for me would be Mcintosh tube amp, but they are hard to come by. Thanks.

smurfmand70
johnc5's avatar
johnc5
40 posts
 
Just purchased the Primaluna Prologue 7's. I was using a Bryston 4B-SST. The prima's are smoother and much deeper and wider soundstage. I am using them with a pair of Martin Logan Ethos speakers and the match is a good one. Plenty of power to run these speakers. I highly recommend these amps.
russ69's avatar
russ69
3,507 posts
 
I use a pair of Quicksilver Mini-Monos (25 watt) on my ML Electromotion ESLs. I'm using the subwoofers crossovers to take some of the load off the amps. It plays loud enough for me and it will play loud enough for condo use but it is at the very limit. If you play louder than me it might not be enough. Quicksilver makes a 40 watt Mid-Mono amp and that may be just what you need. The Quicksilvers are very nice sounding amps and I would never consider selling them, they are that good.
schiss
19 posts
 
I ran ML requests for years with a CJ premier 11A and thought I was very happy. As funds allowed I up graded from the 11 to Premier 8a's (70 watts to 275). I never realized how much music I was missing especially at low volume. Bottom line, the more power you can feed the ML's the better.
atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
11,807 posts
 
The trick with Martin Logans is that quite often if you have a tube amplifier, you will want something like a set of ZEROs (http://www.zeroimpedance.com) to help the amp drive the really low impedance of the speaker, particularly at high frequencies.

ML has been trying to get their speakers to work with transistors; to this end they have kept their impedances low. The problem with this approach is that ESLs and tubes have been the match made in heaven since the 1950s- you put transistors on the speaker and brightness is the name of the game. So it you want to use tubes, you have to deal with the impedance and that is what the ZEROs are for.
zd542
5,339 posts
 
Atmasphere,

What's the difference between an output transformer and an autoformer? Also, as most tube amps are not OTL's, is there a drawback for having both in the chain? I always thought autoformers did pretty much the same thing as OT's.
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