Powerful Tube Amp for SF Strads?

Tuboo,

To try to give you a (slightly) more 'objective' sense of the biasing options, I would say that once the volume requirement surpasses the ability to stay in Class A, it sounds like very high quality solid state. There is a slight hardening of the treble...and because this is an extremely wide bandwidth amp, you really feel the treble harden when the volume breaches class A in the lower 2 biases. That said, it is still very good SS...much purer to my ear than a top level krell...but for a tube lover (who is expecting absolute purity of tone and a natural sound), I do feel this difference. As I said above, the technicals (decay, accuracy, space) will be nearly indistinguishable between biases...but I definitely "feel" the difference. Because I play at 38-50 on all music, I leave it on at full bias. According to Gryphon, the amp draws 800 watts from the wall...a lot but not horrible in the context of a home. Hope between the posts above and this one that you get some idea of the differences in biases.

Hi Lloyd

IMO, just leave the Gryphon in full class A.
Sounds better that way and living in the UK, you always need a heater :-)

cheers

thanks for sharing experiences.
800 watts is a lot, i used to own Atma MA2 which eat up 800 watts each channel..
but a reasonable household vacuumcleaner will eat up 1.5kW and sounds very bad too.
very clever thinking of Mr Rasmussen to implement the various Class A bias range.
i had just the same experience with the Pass XA30 amp here. at lower volumes it sounded sweet, but the moment i really crancked it, it turned to a nasty SS.
btw Pass has a great article on 'Class A' at his website. a must read.
this http://www.tubedepot.com/whisbipo.html is a must read too and a great way of showing how class A works.

keep em spinning :-)

Thanks Tuboo. I will say on full Class A, the sound does not harden at full volumes. But it will on the lower biases when class B starts to get introduced...just slightly. Of course, once you get to a certain point, it is these very slight changes which are important in the never-ending search for 'true sound". I am doing some reading on the Less Loss. Thanks for the advice!

Hi,
I am a little bit late to comment on this thread. I have used for 3 years SF Strad & Gryphon Antileon Signature combo. I was very pleased with overall presentation, speed,and bass handling. But last year I have switched to MBL 9008A monos, they are utterly out of the league. Its a little bit on the dark side but neverthless dynamics, soundstage depth and harmonics are much much better than gryphon.
emre