solid state vs tubes

MrT, there may be another way to do this. The Quad has a low impedance at high frequencies and a lot of transistor amps will tend to make more power due to that, part of the reason why they sound bright on the ESLs and with less bass impact than most tube amps.

OTOH, your Maggies have a flat impedance curve, but also need some power, but delivered into a 4 ohm load. With any SS amp made, the more current you demand of the amp, the more you get non-linearities caused by capacitive elements in the junctions of the output devices. IOW even though they may drive 4 ohms just fine, most transistor amps will sound better on 8 or 16 all other things being equal.

So there is a single solution that might be worth pursuing, the ZERO. If you use a transistor amp, this may take away some of the glare, although you will also loose power. But with a tube amp it may not only have the amp sounding more relaxed, but may give you greater power (although only slightly so) as well.

Some of the driving issues with tubes and Maggies are actually the speaker cables. The ZERO will allow the cable and the amp to see 16 ohms, and then a very short set of cables can be used on the 4 ohms side, allowing you to keep your cable losses to a minimum.

Something to think about.

Atmasphere, could you please elaborate on these; "...non-linearities caused by capacitive elements in the junctions of the output devices."?

Atmo::
When I have a mosfet device under test, what parameter am I looking for?
Under what conditions will I be able to measure this parameter?

The 'capacitive' element of a mosfet would be 2 conductors, separated by an insulator. Now, the drain, source and gate will all have resistence associated with them and the gate oxide, usually pretty thin.....on the order of angstroms, is capacitive but how much? in the nano farads, for sure.
Their doesn't appear to be much capacitance between source and drain since they are both just differently doped regions of the substrate, except in International Rectifier HexFet devices.....(of which Carver was a big fan)
Even the devices I'm used to building, in which the drain is on the bottom of the device have no capacitive elements, again, except the gate oxide.

just curious...........Instead of magfan, you can call me FabGuy.

http://www.irf.com/technical-info/appnotes/mosfet.pdf

Capacitive turnon / turnoff delay.....that seems to be the issue.....
However, In a device with VERY thin gate ox......How much capactance are we actually talking about?

I never even heard the test guys talk about this.....

Fabguy do u need a hp4062ux to test at wafer probe?