Electrostatics and tubes

@whart

Your message made my heart beat faster. I also restored a pair of ESLs and Quad IIs during the 70s and still groan at having been forced to sell them at liquidation prices when I was forced to downsize in retirement.

FWIW, after spending years pairing the speakers with numerous power amps, I could not find a better match than Quad's own 1950s-vintage Class A Quad II monoblocks.  Today, I listen to gear that is an order of magnitude pricier than my old ESL/II combo, but in many ways, the Quads still remain unmatched.  Que lastima.

Boy, you would have loved the Quad IIs when they returned, all shiny and refurbed, from Quad’s UK factory!

Here are the only photos I could find, shot at different times during the restoration process. You can see my 220V Quad IIs to the right of one of my Dynaco projects-in-progress, as I originally purchased them, including NOS Quad-branded tubes.

I ran MartinLogan THEOS and my current Magnepan 1.7i's with my Primaluna Dialogue Premium HP Integrated amp with absolutely no issues. Both sets of speakers sounded stellar. 

A good set of tube amps will be magic with M-Ls. I have an older pair of Sequel II's which do have lower impedance than the more current versions of their ES Hybrids. These speakers and some ReQuests I heard (back in the day that the ReQuests were being sold new) driven by ARC tubes was the best sounding  system I had ever heard, for under $20K, save for my friend's $15K Sound Lab A1's driven by Jeff Rowland amps. He and I went to a demo of Boulder amps with a total system cost of well over $100K and it's couldn't touch the quality of full range sound of the electrostatics.

@hotrod6871 If all I ever drive is a Honda Accord, it would be fine to get me from place A to B.

I would never know the excitement of stepping on that pedal, hearing the engine rev and deep sound of the exhaust note coming from the rear. I would never know that feeling of coming up on a curve in the road, stepping on the excelerator as I reach the apex. If I drove a Corvette or Farrari,  I would know all those feelings.  A low watt tube amp will give you all the excitement of the Honda.  You will hear sound from your Maggie's or Electrostatic speakers,  but you won't feel the music. Most of the tube people will say, they play just fine, they would on a highly efficient speaker. And since they are driving the Honda, they don't know the difference. I would say, buy a used Classe Amp, one with 200 watts and over. You'll be able to find one on this site for around $2000. Test it against the tube amp you want to get. Those older amps hold their value and if it doesn't work out, you can sell it for what you paid.

I am not downing tubes, my front end on my Maggie system is a Bottlehead Foreplay,  backed by Classe CAM350 Monoblocks. My Acoustat Spectra 33's are backed by Acoustat TNT200's Monoblocks by Roy Esposito. All this to say, I've been around the block with panel speakers and I know what drives them best.

Enjoy the Music

@cundare2 - I'm glad you got the old Quad gear restored, though you had to sell it. No images appear- as far as I know, you have to host them through a third party source, and then use the image function in the tool bar above to paste in the url where the images are hosted. 

I did write A Tribute to Quad a few years ago which is online and may have mentioned that I did get to meet Peter Walker at the 1976 CES in Chicago. He was "showing" in a humble little booth at the same time the big electronics firms had revolving displays with attractive female models in bathing suits. Kind of brought home the contrast in approach. These days, I still enjoy the Quad system, though I long recognized their shortcomings. And yes, those modest Quad II amps do sound better (based on sonic memory) with the original Loudspeaker than the more powerful ARC tube stuff I used for a few decades. I found the 63 to be a better all around speaker, but even with the Crosby mods, it did not have that eerie see-through quality of the original. My punchline was that listening to this antiquarian system showed how far we have not come, despite all the technological advances since the '50s.

Best,