Best EL-34 Amps?

Mint604, you must have never listened to a good set of El34's....bummer...

Mint604. A rather profound statement sir! Care to elaborate a little bit.

The El-34 (6CS7) began life in the mid-fifties as being the highest power pentode. It was designed for use in Walt Disney "Fantasia" film. It trickled down to consumer use and was sold to sucker "hi-fi" enthusiasts in the late 50's who could then boast to own a 50 watt amplifier
(compared to other amps at the time which had only 25 watts). The problem with this pentode is that they need much higher voltages and more elaborate circuitry than other output tubes (6l6, 7591 at 325 volts). At over 450 volts this caused the chassis to get very hot and all the componets to change values and become introduce noise. I owned a Marantz 8B that had a dull and lifeless sound due to the 6SC7's, it was noisy and had a compressed sound, unsable with horns. I have a pair of pro Altec amps that also use these tubes and the sound is the same as the Marantz. I have yet to hear any El-34 amp that sounds good and enjoyable. The El-34 should be classified with the 6550 as being higher powered but "non-hi-fidelity"

>> 09-17-08: Kgturner
>> aes sixpacs are amazing at $2500 for the pair. they are
>> the tube amps that go me into tube amps as it were. i'm
>> moved on to 45 SET's, but those little sixpacs are just
>> fabulous for the money.

Indeed! I 2nd the excellent choice of AES Sixpac. I own an upgraded pair (that are up for sale if Stickman451 or anyone else is interested) & I can say that running the EL34 pentodes in triode mode as in the Sixpac creates some very good music.
I've moved onto a more powerful amp because I'm using an Apogee Scintilla speaker that needs an amp that is stable down to 1 Ohms.
Like Kgturner wrote - for the money these are very beautiful sounding amps & for their diminutive size they pump out a sizeable amount of bass.

Mint604- Not sure you can generalize from a sample of 2 (one of which is many years old). Have you heard any modern designs. Hard to imagine anyone calling the ARS Sonum EL-34 amp dull or lifeless, for example.