FWIW, we always get really good feedback from Ref3A owners. This has been true for the last 15 years or so. Customer input agrees with Duke's initial assessments above.
Although the S-30 was really designed for more efficient speakers (it was intended to go after the same market/speaker combos as SETs), it *does* make 30 watts into 8 ohms, which is a lot of power in the SET world. So it gets used on a lot of lower (91-93db) efficiency speakers.
A number of those speakers have less than 'ideal' impedances for the amp, but work great anyway: Merlins and Spendors for example, and the Ref3As. You can always use a set of ZEROs, but another little trick is to run the amp input single-ended and not use the jumpers in the XLRs. This more than doubles the feedback (which reduces the gain) and lets you work with tricker loads.
Although the S-30 was really designed for more efficient speakers (it was intended to go after the same market/speaker combos as SETs), it *does* make 30 watts into 8 ohms, which is a lot of power in the SET world. So it gets used on a lot of lower (91-93db) efficiency speakers.
A number of those speakers have less than 'ideal' impedances for the amp, but work great anyway: Merlins and Spendors for example, and the Ref3As. You can always use a set of ZEROs, but another little trick is to run the amp input single-ended and not use the jumpers in the XLRs. This more than doubles the feedback (which reduces the gain) and lets you work with tricker loads.