Best Power amps in $7000 range

Hey I understand what you mean when you say I've been through amps and I have realized that I only want a high powered one at this point. I feel the same way. Lower powered amps sound good, but something is missing and once you lock onto it, it's hard to ignore. That said, I think the idea of you spending 7000.00 on an amp when you have the sources you do is not the best money you could spend to make your system better. I'd get a 2k amp and a better CD player and table with what is left over, you would end up with better sound. If you are set on buying new from a dealer then you should get to take home as many amps as you want and make sure you love the one you are going to pay full price for.

And to put another fly in the ointment, pairing a 7K amp with a 1k preamp is not exactly making a lot of sense to me either. In my experience a 7K preamp with a 1K amp would bring far greater satisfaction than vise versa.

Seriously. Fix the Classe amp you love so much. That is a well respected company and once they fix your amp you can be assured that it is running at 100% again. Then go out and start shopping for a new preamp and new source players with that 7K that you have to play with.

My dad is replacing his Classe monoblocked CA150'S with the new Aesthetix Atlas amp, its 200w at 8ohm but at 4 ofcourse its got more power, if its double I dont know but its $7900 and blew us both away. It is a Hybrid tube/SS unit with zero feedback, Balanced and Single Ended, and has built in High Pass filters so good for sub matching and Vandersteen and other speakers with powered subs, I have heard far more expensive amps far less impressive.

McCormack DNA 500

if you buy used, add Pass Labs X350.5 to your list. Pass Labs make very good amps. Should last 20 years.

The advice given by other posters about using your budget to upgrade other parts of your system at the same time you buy an amp is sound, especially given your speakers. I checked out your Ushers. Fine speakers, but output limited with two midbass drivers and no dedicated woofers. If rock is what you mostly listen to, you need a high output speaker.

Ideally, you should consider horns or powered speakers like ATC or Genelec. Assuming you are not ready for that, however, I would look at a pair of used Vienna Acoustic Mahlers (+/- $4,500 for a mint used pair). They are 90 db. efficient and each speaker uses the same two 7" midbass drivers as the Wilson Maxx II, plus two 10" woofer, all with ported bass loading -- they go LOUD. With the $3,000 left over, I would buy the highest powered FPB series Krell you can afford or a Levinson 334 or 335 (ideally, a 336).

As for my previous post, wattage in amps is often misunderstood and leads people to buy amps that cannot do what they are purported to do. In solid-state (transistor) amps, power supply capacity is most important, which is why a very high-end 150 watt/channel amp can drive a speaker better than a typical 300 watt/channel amp. Krell will give you current, as will those Levinsons (your Proceed weighed about 1/2 of what a 334 weighs, incidentally) . I look more closely at the weight and price of an amp than the wattage rating - power supplies add weight and cost.

I would use the money left over from swapping out your Ushers to buy a Doge 6 CD player. It has a high capacitance 6-tube triode output stage with tons of punch and no lack of finesse (sells for $5k in Europe due to the import duty, but only $1,400 here).