Pass Labs XA30.5 and ModWright KWA150

Right. The Pass will run near as hot as a tubed amp with similar power. The Pass is overbuilt and is essentially no maintenance. However, if you have a speaker that can work well with a tubed amp, and you are looking for something that sounds like a tubed amp, then buy a tubed amp. You will spend more time trying to get the SS amp to sound like a tubed amp, than time spent with any maintenance issues that are likely with a tubed amp in the first place.

There are some good choices with autobiasing, good customer support, and very good build. You can often find something with an intact warranty at a used price from dealers.

SS amps can work very well, but they take much care and effort.

A Pass amp that works a bit more like a tube amp, especially in terms of damping AND being a very easy load for the tube preamp would be the First Watt Aleph J if you can find one used. I think it works extremely well with smooth and highish impedance speakers (tube friendly speakers).

If you want tube-lie or better amp then look at Spectron amplifiers. One of the reviewers wrote:

"...when the original Musician III arrived for a review, I took the opportunity to ship the [VTL] Siegfrieds back to the factory"
- W. Donnelly

I amnot saying "run and buy it ASAP" but investigate, IMO, you must

All The Best
Rafael

"Tube-like to me means: Dimensionality of images, bloom and decay, a sense of instruments actually present... "

According to these criteria Spectron is the best "tube-like " ss amplifier I auditioned or owned. (There are very few other ss amps standing at this level or may be above but all are much more expensive)

Two people disagreed with this statement:

1) Semi who found combination of Athma-Shere and Merlin speakers to be better: YES, I AGREE WITH YOU. I visited Merlin room at last RMAF where it was matched with another OTL amp, Joule-Electra - YES, it is match made in heaven. BUT - OTL demands large degree of maintaince and OTL cannot drive well speakers with low impedance. For these reasons I do not own OTL and I presume many, many others too.

2) Zybar who compared it to simply excellent BAT VK150SE (at $18k retail, last time I checked). In order to compare more or less fairly "apple-to-apple" he must have Spectron monoblocks with all upgrades (about $11k last time I checked) and he did not specify it (yet...).

Mike

Mike,

Please go back and re-read my posts.

First, I compared the Spectron to Atma-Sphere amps, not BAT.

Secondly, I compared both the Atma-Sphere MA-1's (which are around $18k) and the Atma-Sphere M-60's (which are similarly priced to the Spectron amp). So there was indeed an apples to apples comparison in regards to price.

I also had Pass gear (XA30.5)in which to my ears had more "tube like" (as defined above) qualities than the Spectron.

One last note...yes, OTL amps do require more careful speaker matching, but you can use minimize that issue by using a Speltz Zero Autoformers.

Regards,

George