classe cav-75 bridged into 4 ohms?

Thank you everyone for your thoughts. I finally broke down and called Magnepan and asked them about Joe Abrams' idea... confirmed as best option.

Does anyone have suggestions on a good pre-amp to match? Definitely need photo stage, and maybe a dsp (although might by separate HT). I think someone is (or was) selling a Classe 47.5 ...

Try calling Classe and ask them. I used a CAV150 with thiel speakers 1.5 cs in a home theater. Had no problems and according to the Classe Tech the CAV150 would double in 4 ohm loads. The Thiel speakers I have probably run down to 2 ohms at some frequencies.

If I remember correctly, the Maggie 1.6s are BiWired. If that's true, then you'd be much, MUCH better off using each of (4 of) the Classe's channels individually in a passive Bi-amp configuration. Specifically, you'd use one channel for the bottom and one channel for the top of each speaker. Speaking in practical terms, this puts less of a nasty load on the amp, while effectively getting much more useable power to each speaker than if you fed it with conventionally with just one "big" bridged channel from the same amp. Hope this helps.
Best, Joe

i'm planning to get some maggie 1.6's. i've used the cav-75 in normal, unbridged, 8 ohm environment and it sounded awesome. has anyone used this amp with a 4 ohm load? if this doesn't seem like its going to work...i'll guess i can sell the amp... any sugesstions for a 2-channel amp for maggie 1.6's or a pair of mono's?
thx
mike

I ran one like that to some Martin Logans (theater/center and aerius i's) and it sounded fine. I have a large room and never ran out of power. Its not as nice a a good 2 channel amp but for the price you can't beat the options of 3 through 6 channels. I sold a ca300 thinking that I could use the 75 bridged. Big mistake as The sound was several steps below that of the 2 channel amps. What speakers are you running?

That would mean a 2ohm load for each of those channels. Is the CAV-75 stable and capable at 2ohms? The specs seem to only refer to 8ohm loads.

Kal

I would be very careful and make sure that you can bridge 4 ohm's some amps are only suited to bridge 8 ohm loads.