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Amplification for Wilson Watt Puppy 7s or 8s

Putting together a new system and would like feedback from those within the community who own Puppy 7s or 8s in particular. I am trying to narrow my choice regarding amplification from the following. Would appreciate your feedback regarding your experience using these in your system:

VTL S-400 Reference; VTL 450 monos w/ VTL T.L6.5 preamp
BAT VK 150SE monos w/ VK 52SE preamp
VAC Phi-200 monos w/renaissance preamp
E.A.R. 890 monos w/E.A.R. 912 preamp

My listening room is 25"L x 17'W x 12'T . I listen to all genres of jazz, blues, house music, classical, gospel and spoken word. Yes it is eclectic but I truly love all forms of music. From time to time I will turn the volume up quite high but this is the exception, not the rule.

I hope to acquire most, if not all, of the components pre-owned but well taken care of. If I need to buy new, I will as a last resort.
winston50

Showing 4 responses by atmasphere

atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
12,088 posts
 
The WP8s are very tube friendly so you have a wide range of amps available. You do need some power, but the requirement is not crazy. The National sales manager for Wilson ran a set of our MA-1s on his WP8s and they are only 140 watts. He only got our bigger amp when he went to the Maxx.

ARC is also popular with the Wilson crowd; I would expect that CJ would be a nice match, if you can afford it, CAT would be good too. VTLs work great on them... like I said there are a lot of amps for you to try.
atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
12,088 posts
 
FWIW, the Puppy woofers don't need a lot of 'current'. John Giolas, the national sales manager for Wilson, used our amps for years on his WP7s and 8s. You have to understand that at Wilson, you have your pick of almost any amp you want, and you don't see them using amps that are particularly 'high current'.
atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
12,088 posts
 
Dob, you might want to try it before you write off tubes with the WPs. There was a resonant peak that you referred to in the Watts at 2KHz, so Wilson installed a trap that set the impedance to 2 ohms or less. What do many transistor amps do with low impedances? They make more power as we all know. This exacerbates the resonance issue. Now put a tube amp on there and what do you get? The power goes down, and the tweeter resonance is controlled.

For some reason, the low impedance in the woofer range of the Sasha does not seem to bother our MA-1. It might be due to the phase angle, but in the system I heard you could play it to a very nice volume and yet the VU meters on the amps hardly move.
atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
12,088 posts
 
Dob, thanks for your input. As far as the musical peaks thing goes, FWIW I am used to seeing those meters move a little- the fact that they don't on the Sashas in the system I heard says to me they are easy to drive.

Given the amps you mentioned, I would go with your choice too, I think. Not all tube amps are equal!!
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