I have Maggie MG 1.6's - need amp advice

Maggies are easy to drive up to the 'knee' of their magnet system which is not push-pull (MG 20.1s are an exception and are easy to drive at any volume). Getting additional volume above the knee requires a lot of power as the speaker dynamically compresses. This has to do with the distance that the diaphragm gets from the magnets during excursion- the strength of the magnet decreases by the square of the distance. Getting bass off of the diaphragm helps a lot too as that effectively limits excursion, allowing 'below the knee' operation as some fairly high sound pressures.

Below the knee, they are easy. A set of our M-60s will do quite well if used with a set of ZEROs. The trick with using any tube amp is an effective 3-4 ohm capability, which is a stretch for many tube amps. A set of ZEROs solves that nicely.

Dear Atmasphere,
Could you write a word or two about what you mean by "The trick with any tube amp is an effective 3-4 ohm capability...". Thanks.

Let's put it this way- tube amps in general do not perform as well on 4 ohms as they do on 8 or 16. Output transformers do not do as well on lower impedances due to increased turns ratios, which have inductive and capacitive effects that reduce bandwidth and absorb power.

OTOH, there are speakers out there that sound best with good tube amps and are 4 ohms. Maggies are an example. Not all tube amps with 4 ohm taps really work with the 4 ohm tap. For this reason, you are often better off with a set of ZEROs which are optimized for low impedances, while running the amplifier on a higher impedance tap.

In the old days Magnaplanar made some 8 ohm speakers which made the tube vs. transistor demo that much more profound. Going to 4 ohms has caused a lot of tube amps to cede some ground to solid state, but if the impedance issue is leveled, tubes easily win out. The ZERO is an easy access to this.

Eldartford, this comment

Most solid state amps are power-limited by current. Tube amps, whose power supplies run at several hundred volts, may hit an output voltage ceiling, resulting in a flat top on a sinusoidal signal called (for obvious reasons) "clipping". Their distortion rises slowly with power until it takes a sharp knee upwards at clipping. Solid state amps do not have such a sharp knee distortion increase, and for them "clipping" is generally taken as the power level where the gradually-increasing distortion reaches one percent.

-is not correct. All amplifiers 'clip'. Solid state amps do so with odd orders, meaning that their clipping is harsher than that of tubes (and is one of the reasons that there is the story of tube 'power' being more effective than transistor 'power' as we have seen so often in other threads). It is true that with most transistor amps by the time they have reached 1% THD, they are clipping while this may not be true for some tube amps. There is a distinction here.

Beyond that you are right, power is power regardless of the amp that makes it, so if the amp makes the power that is demanded by the load and the output voltage than the current will be there too. Maggies are a fairly resistive load, so the 'current' that everyone speaks of cannot exist without the 'voltage' IOW: power.

"I canna change the laws of physics!" -Scotty

No Doubt!! Clipping any large amp will eat tweeters pretty fast.

Although tube amps do have more THD in general, the idea is to generate less of the distortions the ear *objects* to, and tubes are quite good at that. This goes back to that 'tube power' 'transistor power' debate (personally to me watts is watts so I use the idea of 'usable power' instead of tube/transistor power- the idea conveys easier).