Amp advice sought for Coincident Total Victory

Greg, Mike, Montejay, thanks very much! Excellent info, particularly that a Dragon Mark II is in the works, as I wasn't intending to purchase immediately. Hopefully the price won't increase commensurately with the weight :-)

Best regards,
-- Al

It's nice to hear the there will be Dragon Mk2. I had a friend's Dragon in my system and although I was impressed with the sound, the build quality left a lot to be desired when compared to other amps in the same price range.

I auditioned the TV2 against the Total Eclipse 2 using a KT88 PP amp, a 300B DHT, a 300B parallel PP, and an 845 DHT with 300B driver. In each instance, the TV2 benefited from the extra power when compared to the TE2. Although the TV2 has impressive specifications which would lead one to believe that 8w should be enough, the 9 driver configuration needed more power to get it jumping. I ended up purchasing the Total Eclipse speakers because of their versatility with respect to suitable amplifiers, plus they sounded awesome.

Brf,
Like you I own the Total Eclipse II speakers and they are brilliant with the Frankenstein. You raise an interesting point. The T.E. has 2 10 inch woofers and the T.V.II uses 4 8 inch woofers, I had`nt thought that a major difference but it`s certainly possible. There`s such a variety of personal accounts and opinions with the many posts here. Arthur Salvatore says a 5 watt amp drove the T.V.II well, yet you preferred more power with your encounter. Perhaps the T.E. though 3db less sensitive is easier driven with low watt amps. I do prefer the Franks over my 100 watt push pull amp. Horses for courses I guess.

There's also the difference in impedance - the TV2 hovers around 10 ohms, while the TE is around 14 ohms. While seemingly insignificant, the added complexity in the crossover of the TV2 probably makes it a less benign load.

IF you can find them used, you may want to look at Manley Neo-Classic 300B SE/PP monoblocks. Unfortunatley, I thinkt he price went up to $9200 per pair today (might be tomorrow) from the previous $7400.

I just bought a pair about a month ago. First, the amps are selectable between SE at 11 wpc and PP at 24 wpc. They also have variable feedback setting and a switch to optimize speaker impedance.

I am using them to drive my Zu Essence speakers in a 12*16*8 room, and I can promise you that they are VERY dynamic and will play ridiculously loud in either SE or PP. The Essence are listed as 97 dB efficient, but Stereophile estimated their real efficiency to be around 94 dB.

Now that the amps are beginning to be fully broken in, I am literally startled at the dynamics and bass that they are capable of on material that I thought I was intimately familiar with when listening to it on my former solid state gear (Rega Elicit). Imaging and soundstage depth, width, and height are also in a different league.

I believe that Manley gear is supposed to be a synergistic match with Coincident speakers, and I think at one time, Israel had purchased a pair of EveAnna's 300B's.

If the Frankenstein is even better than the Manley as some tend to think-- then HOLY COW!

I, for one, have NO desire to switch out my amps. I may do some tube rolling to replace the stock Electro-Harmonix with something like Treasures or EAT's, but that will be it.

One caveat, I don't think the Manley's are as tonally neutral as some other gear, but I am personally fine with that. Rachel Yamagata was in my living room last night. The Manley/Zu combo is so dynamic that you can feel the pressure variations on the phrasing of the vocals on tracks on this disc.

Charles1dad, if the Frankensteins are even better, I am super-jealous.

PMB