Best Amp to drive my Apogee Stages?

LitL: You made another very important point, that is a truly outstanding and revealing system can expose all the drawbacks of a poor recording. That is the case with THE Apogee. I fully concur. So the solution is do not play poor recording on it!! Garbage in, garbage out. The speaker is so ruthless that it conceals nothing. On top of that if your electronics is also of the same calibre, you are asking for more trouble,

The Stage in contrast is more forgiving, which can be a blessing sometimes. Glad to know you also own Stages. By the way, I have also listened to the Stage with a Krell KSA-100 for quite some time and boy do they sound good with a Krell also.

My fullrange is driven by all tubes. Yeap, all tubes. To my knowlege I am the only person on the planet who is driving this speaker with all tubes. Right now the system is bi-amped with TRL GT-800 at the bottom and TRL GT-400 at the top, collectively using 144 tubes.

My system is given here at A'gon:
http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?vaslt&1066703453

See details.

Any of the Evolutions from Krell should do the job.

Hey Gallant_diva. 144 tubes must light up (and warm up) your listening room quite well. That is amazing and fun. My Dad worked for Ampex back in the 60's, but he went to solid state when he bought his Apogee Studio Array back in the mid 90's (when those were the latest from Jason Bloom). He had never heard either the Fullrange nor the Divas until about 1 year ago. It was a teriffic day indeed.

I will keep looking for the Krell KSA-100. That seems like a perfect option for me. If I do find one I have a certified Krell Technician under my belt who can re-cap an one of these older Krell amplifiers for me.

I would love meet you and come listen to some music with you some day? Good recordings seem very hard to find so if you have any vinyl suggestions (any genre) I am open.

LitL

I have apogee centaur minors and drive it with Krell KSA 80. i have an audio note pre amp so i think i have the right blend of tubes and power. i then went and bought a pair of Krell KMA 160's (the mono blocks) but still haven't tried it out due to renovations and the kids taking up all my time.

also added a second REL sub so system is looking up would have loved to have the Stages though - have heard them a few times and they are special.

I ran my Stage for a while as a Stage-etta...Stage/Duetta. The Stage reproducing highs and mids, along with upper bass...and the Duetta bass panel handling bass from around 80hz-25hz. (The mix of the two sounded outstanding!).

My Stage are the MiniGrands...but the Duetta Signature bass, is better sounding than the MiniGrand subwoofers.

Sadly, one of my Stage now has the dreaded Apogee bass panal BUZZZZZZZ...so the good one is now working as my center channel speaker.

Dave