Power amp Suggestions for Dunlavy SC-IV

I have owned the Dunlavy SCIV's for many years now and they are very efficient with a very flat and stable impedance curve which tubes love. I primarily use a Bel Canto SET40 Single Ended 845 Triode amp which gives 35 watts RMS and 70 watts peak. This works wonderfully. You get the full instrumental harmonics, plenty of dynamic swing, and awesome sound staging. Absolutely NO NEED FOR SUBWOOFERS. I also use a custom buildt EL84 amp that puts out 15 powerful watts and does a fantastic job. As long as you use an amplifier of great design quality and above flea power wattage you will be fine......depending on the room size you will be using them in, of course. The larger the room, the more power you will need. I have used these speakers for about a dozen years now and have no plans on replacing them. As mentioned above, they are very revealing and will expose everything upstream, so system synergy is very key but also very rewarding. Best of luck.

Don

Trinculo, like Pryso, I have a pair of the Duntech Princess speakers that were made by John Dunlavy in Australia and I am driving them also with a pair of JC-1 monos. Years ago I was using a Rowland Model 5 ss amp to drive them. It was some of the best sound that I ever had and sometimes I wish that I had never traded it. You probably can buy one used within your budget. I recommend that it is worth trying to find one.
Carter

I'm looking at this thread as an old Duntech Princess owner who seriously considered Dunlavy's and listened to them a lot. My general observation is that Duntechs sounded better with solid state amplification (it controlled the woofers better, and the older Duntechs had a slightly warmer tonal balance than the Dunlavys--Rowland stuff in particular and some of the Krell Class A amps were a beautiful match with them), and Dunlavys sounded better with tubed amplification (I heard them with VTL, ARC and VAC amplification, among others--the slight warmth of the tubes made them a little more listenable). However, you implied in the start of the thread that you wanted to use the Dunlavys for mastering; for that purpose the Bryston or Mac amps might be a better choice, even though, as Shadorne aptly pointed out, they might sound a little unforgiving. For pleasure, I wouldn't necessarily choose them, but they put out a lot of clean, undistorted power that would certainly suit a mastering studio application.

Absolutely no need for subwoofer(s) unless you like bass. The SCIVs go down to about 70hz then begin to roll off. Low powered tube amps would be a great match. But YOU WILL NEED A SUB.

I had a pair of sc3's and ran them successfully with cary slam 100's (90 watts trode) with excellant results.