2. amps-preamps
  3. 1249959533

Baby Steps back to Tubes.

I have been thinking of doing this for a while now so I descided to go back to tubes gradually. I just bought a cary sl98p . I would like some recommendations for solid state amps that work well with this pre. For speakers I have NHT 3.3's so obviously, well to me anyway I would require at least 150 watts a side preferably more and high current. I am using a Musical Fidelity Tri Vista 300 integrated now and listen to more vynil than cd,s and have a Graham slee Reflex era gold for the phono end of it with a Michel Gyro SE mk II , Rega Exact II MM . Digital is an Esoteric DV 50S .I Primarily listen to rock and blues mostly 60's and 70's era.The room is 15 by 27 with 9 ft ceilings. I got away from tubes back in the late seventies when I first got married and now single and happy again thought I would give it a try again (the tubes that is!). Your experiences are much appreciated. Cheers!
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Showing 2 responses by pauly

pauly
1,012 posts
 
Go with a solid state amp with the NHT’s.

Any speaker with an impedance curve that varies a lot across its frequency range is generally not a good match for a tube amp.
pauly
1,012 posts
 
Has2be. No amount of tube "power" will ever make up for big variances in impedance curve. If you want to use tubes you must have a tube friendly speaker.

On an over, over simplified level:

A transistor amp’s output goes up as the impedance drops i.e 100wpc into 8 ohm, 200wpc into 4ohm, 400wpc into 2ohm etc. etc. Obviously as the speaker impedance goes up, the output goes down. So speaker manufacturers will make certain that when their speaker’s impedance drops, the speaker is less efficient, and more efficient where the impedance is higher. That way the speaker’s output remains constant across the frequency range.

Tube amps do not react like transistor amps. Their output does not double when the impedance halves; in fact some of my amps put out more as the impedance goes up! And they lose the plot totally when the impedance drops too low.

So can you imagine the frequency response you get when you play a tube amp on a speaker voiced for a transistor amp? Not nice ...
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