Recommendations for good Class A SS Amp 100-200W

It was more likely your friends room, rather than the class of the amp used.

Probably a combination of both. I have upwards of 20 different amps. I happen to have a G.A.S.500 newly rebuilt by Mike Bettinger of gasudio. This thing is literally brand new. It is superb. However the ones I've just gotten back from Roy Esposito are the ones that knock my socks off: the Acoustat TNT200. I have three of these and one TNT120 I will be using for an active JBL 4345 system I'm currently building. Roy has rebuilt these with mono switches and balanced input option. Bridged, they put out over 1100 watts but even in stereo mode, just one of these will shake your floor. Super fast with a damping factor of over 1000 up to 1khz. The lowest, strongest bottom end I've experienced so far. The most realistic amp I have ever heard. Roy was part of the engineering team that designed the Acoustat products and runs a small facility dedicated to their revival.

Gerald,

In my experience, its not the watts that matter for what you seek. Not necessarily the Class A topology either. The Krell is known for bass wallop and is a very high current design. High current (and high capacitance maybe?) usually make a big difference...i suspect in addition to bass volume, the Krell is tight-fisted as well...which means the bass has both impact and snap...the VTL should have volume and impact...as much snap i cannot say.

Get a Krell if that is what you seek...other Class A amps include Pass Labs, Gryphon, Vitus...all of which throw serious bass. I know and own Gryphon. Again i am not convinced its just about the Class A design. For just the bass element, you can also use big Brystons, or possibly Classe, Rowland.

BTW, i think Celestions are great...my first speaker was the SL6si...and i always wanted to hear the mighty SL6000 system...congrats. A seriously great system by all accounts. Enjoy.

I think you may be going about this the wrong way. As far as power ratings go, there is no standard. For example 10 different amps from 10 different companies all rated at 100 watts per channel will all put out a different amounts of power. As far as being class A, I don't think that’s it, either. You should have no problem getting the same kind of power from an AB amp.

There are so many factors that may be responsible for the results you are getting we can only guess at what the problem is. I'll list a few things that might be worth looking at.

-Other components; especially the preamp. Don't underestimate the importance of the preamp. I've literally had situations where upgrading the preamp was the equivalent of adding a subwoofer.

-Koestner says it may be the room. I agree. (Its more likely a combination of different factors, just to be more clear)

-Unless I'm mistaken, your speaker is a bookshelf/stand mounted design.

-It looks like you are biamping with 2 completely different amplifiers. I don't even know where to begin on this one except, stop. Just use 1 amp. If you can't get results with a DNA500, I'm not sure what to tell you; except..

-You just may like the sound of the old Krell amps. Many do. If that's the case, it may make sense for you to buy one. Just one. (If you must have 2 amps and biamp them, I highly recommend you buy 2 stereo amps, exactly the same, and do a vertical biamp. I don't feel its necessary, but at least you wont be doing anything that will mess up your sound quality.)