Sonus Faber Guarneri with SET amplifier -possible?

Kevin at Upscale Audio (see the A'gon Guild) features SF and Cary. He'd be a good resource.

Marty

Both are great gears. I recalled listening to Guarneri with low output transister amp. I didn't hear the midrange-to-die-for like when it's being driven with more powerful amps. You can try to supercharge it with Musical fidelity KW550. Again, listen first and decide, if you like it then no need to spend more. I'm just not sure it'd work.

Hi. I owned the Guarneri for several years. IMHO you will get beautiful timbre with an SET with a large power supply, but transient speed and bass will be slow. If you want to give it a go, you will need an SET with a big power supply.

I found good results with a pair of Berning zh-270 monoblocs and a pair of Art Audio Quartets. I feel those have the minimum power for the Guarneri. You may want to consider a push pull design with zero or very low feedback. Some members feel the Guarneri really needs a good solid state amp with more than 200 watts to obtain fast transients. I generally don't lean toward the solid state sound, but I wanted to share their perspective. A compromise may be something like a kt90 100+ watt push pull amp with lots of current.

In summary, I think a good SET will sound beautiful, but slow. A powerful solid state will sound fast, but lose some of the harmonic beauty of that speaker. So, I'd look for a 100+ watt push pull with low or no feedback and a big power supply. Good luck. Jeff

Thank you for the answers. I am currently driving Guarneri with Jadis DA88S integrated amp 60 W per channel with great results. The timbre and harmonic richness is to die for. I have this amp but Guarneri are not mine. I am thinking about feature development of my system. I have to decide where to go – more powerful push-pull monoblocks or more refined but low watts SET amplifiers.
I decided that loudspeakers will solve this dilemma. If I find loudspeakers that really suits my taste I will know what amp will be next. I have on my short list loudspeakers with high efficiency (only dynamic) like Coincident Speakers, Living Voices, ART Loudspeakers, and much more with low efficiency like Sonus Faber Guarneri, Amati, ProAc Response and many others.
So far Guarneri sounded best in my system, so I will rather stay with PP tubes and fine tune the timbre with tube rolling.

i power the guarneri memento's either with a mf kw500 or a vtl 5,5 preamp and quicksilver v4 combination. the quicksilvers deliver 120 watts only but are by far superior to the kw,s. the quicksilvers are elevated to a higher performance level with the ps audio ac3 power cords. soundstage depth and realism are remarkable using the latter combination. the guarneri's sound more powerful and realistic with the quicksilver combination than with the kw500,s.
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