Tube amp recommendation

I'd say "provide a budget", but I'll just take the liberty of suggesting a used Sonic Frontiers Power 2 if you can afford it ($1,500-$2,000). It holds bias really well, can drive most speakers and features very high build quality, especially for the money. If you can't afford one, a used Sonic Frontiers Power 1 can be had for $800-$1,000. At 50 watts/channel, a Power 1 won't drive 86 db. efficient speakers to loud volume in big rooms, but it will do fine with most 88 db+ efficient speakers in average rooms and has all the qualities of its "bigger brothers". These amps use 6550 tubes, which are fairly cheap to replace ($80/pair) and you'll get a couple of thousand hours out of the tubes anyway.

A word to the wise - you need to be very, very careful in buying a tube amp, as the vast majority of them cannot control the woofers of typical speakers. Only very expensive tube amps (which are very expensive because they use high quality output transformers and beefy power supplies) can get it done. "Entry" or "mid-level" tube amps are almost always very compromised designs and you are better off going with solid-state if you are on a budget - at that price point, it is extremely difficult to buy a decent tube amp, while there are a number of good sounding solid-state amps available which will offer better overall sound.

FWIW if the amp is good, its good with rock, hip hop, electronic, classical- whatever.

Contrary to opinion above, the size of the woofer and the ability for the amp to control it really is a red herring. A small amp controls a big woofer just fine. But usually a small amp has less power- you're going to cause it to clip sooner. Some speakers are designed for the amp to have **lots** of loop negative feedback (IOW: transistor) and tube circuits, owing to increased linearity of tubes, often run less feedback, and in many cases, none at all.

This is a difference of design consideration and is not a matter of 'control'. See

http://www.atma-sphere.com/papers/paradigm_paper2.html

for more information.

If you want to get the most out of a tube amplifier, your tube amplifier investment dollar will be best served by a speaker that is 8 ohms or more. This is actually true of transistors as well, as long as your goal is sound quality and not raw sound pressure.

Look into Quicksilver products. Very reliable built like a"Mac Truck" and can be picked up at decent prices. I had a pair of V-4's that didn't require constant biasing, had no problems they were just plain easy to own. If they were a car they would be a Toyota( with apologizes to domestic companies)

Ralph: I did not write that there is a correlation between the "size of the woofer and the ability for the amp to control it". What I was trying to convey, but did not do so clearly, is that the vast majority of tube amps do not have the high quality output transformers or beefy power supplies needed to control the woofers of the average audiophile speaker, which these days tends to present a 4 ohm load or less on average in the bass. To fill in the blanks for this gentleman, it takes twice the current to drive a 4 ohm speaker than it does to drive an 8 Ohm speaker, all things being equal. In rough terms, the output transformers convert voltage into current, and in my experience, only the very good ones (i.e., very expensive ones) do this with the efficiency required to drive low-impedence speakers with authority ("authority" meaning tight, accurate bass). The role of power supplies is to house and supply the voltage that is processed by the output transformers, and big power supplies are needed to allow a tube amp to properly drive low impedence (i.e., 4 Ohms or less) speakers because such speakers require a lot of current. There are very well known 750 watt/channel monoblocks that cannot control the woofers of typical 4 ohm speakers because they use mediocre output transformers, while there are also 8 watt/channel tube amps featuring extremely high quality output transformers and huge-ass power supplies that can very effectively control the woofers of low impedence speakers.

In suggesting a speaker of 8 Ohms or more, what you are suggesting is not inconsistent with what I wrote. Of course, most of your designs are output transformer-less, which is why you advocate an 8 Ohm speaker. Again for the author of this thread, an "output transfrmer-less" tube amp is, as the name suggests, a tube amp that has no output transformer. The advantages of such an amp are greater purity and immediacy, with the downside being that, generally speaking, they do not do well with low impedence speakers (maybe your very expensive products can, but they would present an exception to the rule). The problem is, other than horns, the majority of audiophile speakers feature an average impedence well below 8 Ohms, which is why I provided the above advice, which I stand by. Please don't get me wrong - I know you build top-quality products and have myself owned a zero-feedback, triode power amp for many years now (VAC Renaissance amps) - but with a typical 4 Ohm speaker, which is most of them these days, I believe it takes a really fine tube amp, i.e., something with top-notch transformers and lots of capacitance, to provide tight bass.

Speakers are a big determining factor in the amp decision. You should look to the Quicksilver silver Mono, V4, ARC VT 100, MKi, ii, iii, Reference line, VS110, VAC, and a handful of others. jallen