Amp for Shahinian Diapasons

Plinius - only 250 or Reference. My SA-102 did not srive well Diapasons. The speakers really shined then I bought my 1st Spectron Musician III in 2005. Today the amp is more powewrful and more musical.

I know a few more owners of Diapason/Spectron combo and they love it. You neeed POWER and lots of it to see these speakers real capabilities.

Dick Shahinian also recommended to me Plinius SA-102...but Dick owned, at that time, two of them as monoblocks and of course it works fine with 400 watts per amp in pure class A

Dick,
Recommended to me a single SA-100 for the Diapasons. He also said he was astounded how well a SA-50 drove them as well. I was not overly impressed when I heard Spectrons on Analysis speakers. Bob

"Dick,
Recommended to me a single SA-100 for the Diapasons. He also said he was astounded how well a SA-50 drove them as well. I was not overly impressed when I heard Spectrons on Analysis speakers "

It is very interesting how people can use the same equipment and hear very different sounds !

I owned Diapason for many years and I thought it would be my last speakers and I used many tube and ss amplifiers with it.

Comparing 2005 original Spectron (not today's Mk2) with Plinius SA-102 (practically the same as SA-100 you used) difference was enourmous. While Plinius was somewhat better then early Spectron in treble (cleaner and more extended) Spectron has more midrange testure and provided BASS(!) - as no other amplifier I tried before did including Plinius which sounded rather castrated. Its day/night difference, not subtle by any means. Incidently, Plinius SB-300 has much better bass then SA-100/2/3 but luck their finesse.

The other funny things that when I had to sell my beloved Diapason I moved to...Audio Analyses Omega speakers which are more suitable to my current small listening room. I admit it took me some time and efforts to make Omega/Spectron esceptionalpair.

You can disregard my words, of course but...The Absolute Sound gave Spectron/Audio Analyses (Omega) "Best Sound in The Show" in CES 2009" and these people are not deaf!

Simon,
Thank you for your response but many factors can be at play in marring an otherwise worthy system. We have all seen this and it could have been at play during my audition of this system. I also like to think I know what music sounds like since I am married to a professional Musician.

I had an interesting occurrence yesterday. I have a single CJ Evolution 2000 (used to have 3 when I had Apogee Scintillas) that I had planned on using with the Shahinians.
I spoke to both the seller of the speakers and Dick Shahinian regarding which speaker terminals to use with the speakers. There are 3 different places that one could hook up the speakers with and it is quite confusing. Anyway, both Shahinian and the seller told me you could use either of the main terminals. I selected one of the terminals and turned on the amp. It sounded horrible to say the least. There was no treble and the midrange was terrible. I was really afraid that the CJ was malfunctioning. Last night, on a lark I felt agitated that this huge amp couldn't be used for this speaker and I decided to see if anything would change by trying the other speaker terminal. Once I did this, I was stunned! There was treble and midrange and speaker came to life!

It is ncredible that I was going to get rid of a perfectly good amplifier because the speakers were not correctly connected to it! Tonyptony told me the that the Ultravalve by Van Alstine worked great for his Diapasons so I couldn't understand why my 114 pound Evolution 2000 couldn't work as well. Anyway, I am enjoying the sound without the additional expenditure of a new amp.