Tube Amplifier for Thiel

I had those speakers too and loved them. Audio Research Classic 120 was good, Vt100iii no good! Vt200+ may be good! Under power tube amps will made poor bass. CJ Premier 350 very good and musical for SS.

I think audiovalve challanger 180 monoblocks would do a fine job with the thiel's;180 watts class A using KT-88's.
I run these on my soundlab m2's and they perform as well as my roland model 6 monoblocks.German made very high quality,great looks and perform extremely well;if you can find a pair they are worth considering.

What do you think of BAT VK-500? It sounds like a power horse with lots of power. What do you think a good matching tube pre-amp for it? The problem is that my CDP doesn't have balanced output; so I need to find a pre-amp, best under $1500, that has both XLR and RCA. Any recommendation? Thanks!!

As others have noted, you need current with the Thiels. Medium sized SS or tube amps are not going to cut it.

There are 3 options;

1. buy the big CJ or VTL tube amps, but that will run you some coin.
2. buy a big SS amp, not as good as the tubes, but wont cost as much.
3. Buy a small tube amp you like that has the sonic characteristics, and feed its output into a pair of the Musical Fidelity Super Charger amps.

CJ PV-12 + CJ EV2000 + CS3.6

I would offer 1600 on that CJ Evolution 2000 listing which expires April 13th.

I 2nd Jafant's recommendation for CJ.

I 2nd Usound's suggestion of using the long wall and the importance placed on a low impedance capable amp.

I 2nd Jdolgin's recommendation for pairing the 3.6s with a warm sounding preamp. 3.6s are bright and the PV-12 mitigates that. And use RCA Cleartops.

I 2nd Salectric statement about tubes having a bigger effect in the amp section than the preamp section. Unfortunately such an amp is prohibitively expensive for speakers as hungry as yours.

You are on the right track with tube-pre and ss-amp. The EV2000 is really a SS beast with some tube accoutrements. It's rated at 200wpc and idles at 210w (measured with a kilowatt). If you are drawing 300w at the wall than you are already above most people's comfort zone. If the music has heavy bass, the same volume will draw between 400w and 450w. The most I've pulled from the EV2000 was between 600w and 700w. You will have tinnitus before this amps fails.

I think you (like I) place high value on bass energy so the tube integrated amp is not really a candidate. For fun I tried my friend's 60wpc LA Audio amp and it bested my EV2000 in many ways, though it did not deliver the high energy nor the depth I get from the EV2000. When pushed the LA Audio's bass rolled off gracefully and it's treble clipped ungracefully. I would bet for many audiophiles the 60wpc tube amp would remain a fine match for the CS3.6s, so long as they stick to their vocals, classical, and jazz. Those listeners would actually be fine with expensive bookshelf speakers like Harbeth or B&W.