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Best amps for MBL101e's?

I took the plunge and bought 101e's and restarting the upgrade bug. These speakers are not very efficient and in a large room. I have the EMM labs combo, and probably am going to buy the 6010d preamp that I am demoing right now (great phono section, has the ability to match levels for 4 different output channels). My bias in the past has been tubes (MC2000, VT100mkII)...any suggestions?

Thanks,
Chris
128x128mount_rose_music

Showing 2 responses by atmasphere

atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
11,615 posts
 
A customer of ours swears that the MA-2 is the best map he's heard on his system. From his reports, we've been able to determine that the MBL 101s are not nearly has hard to drive as they have the reputation for!
atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
11,615 posts
 
Hi Dob, FWIW our customer found that the MA-2 ($32,000) ran the speaker so well that he became quite curious as to what our preamps did, and bought one of those (MP-1, $10,300) so his system is all-tube. Apparently he had done solid state, and then went to tubes in short order, and after about a year of trying different amps, found us about a year ago. He still has the equipment now so I guess it does what he was looking for. He says he likes to play things loud, but what that means to one person is something else to another.
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