Top ten tube amps

I have to put in a word here for the Sonic Frontiers Power 3 or Power 2 amps. I recently acquired a pair of Power 3's and had Chris Johnson, the original co-owner of SFI, now running Parts Connexion to upgrade them to SE+. I can't believe it gets much better than this in the audio world of diminishing returns. Always looking for that elusive combination of the best of tube quality with the control of SS and I this is close. Had quite a few tube based systems in the past including VTL, ARC, Granite Audio, Kora, as well as Bryston, Simaudio, Musical Fidelity stuff and the modded SFI amps outperform everything so far and now relatively inexpensive to find .... Built like the proverbial brick sh*@-house.

What I like about the Power 3's is the combination of finess and muscle, very palpable sound, refined and detailed but not sterile, you can follow the individual instruments or bathe in the bliss of the total sound. Equally good whether its vintage rock or female vocals. What I don't like is they are a very toastie 220 watts per channel, which is OK in the Ottawa winter!

Hmm,
I may not make a complete the top ten list, but somewhere in it I will put a shameless plug for my Bruce Moore Custom M120 Mono blocs. Citation transformers do the trick. They can be run in Triode mode as well as Ultralinear.

I'm keeping them.

For now...

I'm thinking on those ML3 also

I'm all for very high-end systems and have proven capable of spending a lot to get that last 3%, but spending $120k for a piece of gear is just idiotic -- think of the good that a mere half of that money could be put to use for. Seriously. Vladimir builds great stuff and has integrity, but he is tempting our worst tendencies as Americans toward mindless excess.

QUAD mkII - What else??

D Visser