is lamm 1.2 enough for sasha

Hi Tabu,

Go to Whatsbestforum.com Look at the thread "What Preamp Have I Not Tried". A Sasha owner looking for a new preamp...some suggestions are that it might actually be the Lamm 1.2 that he may wish to consider upgrading.

Interesting read...and you may wish to speak with MadFloyd who originally posted the thread.

good luck.

The M1.2R can drive them easily.
But it should be matched with a proper Preamp which has a good, strong output signal. LL2.1 is such a unit, that is a very remarkable combination.

I've been living happily with this combination for over 2 years. My previous room was 20X36X9 and the Lamms did fine and never ran out of steam. As mentioned above, they are a great matching amp for the Sashas. Good luck!

Dave

I can also confirm that Lamm M1.2 Ref drives the Sashas very well.

I *have* got them to clip, but only when playing the Sheffield Drum LP at extremely high volumes.

I personally wouldn't go for the more powerful M2.2 because it's sonically inferior (otherwise it would cost more and not less).

Indeed the Lamm M1.2 has been used with wilson speakers at hi-fi shows.

Take a look:
http://www.avguide.com/blog/the-lamm-wilson-summit-nyc

Yes. This is a great combo and the 1.2s handle the Sashas without a sweat.

I completely and utterly agree. I run that set up to extreme satisfaction.

When Lamm and Wilson share a room at audio shows which demonstrate the WP 7s (years back), the Sasha and Sasha 2, they always go with the Lamm 1.2. Simply beautiful and more than enough wattage.

Hi Tabu, your probably aware the the Sasha's while being a great speaker are a pig of a load, if not just read the test measurments Stereophile did on them. esspecially in the lower mid bass, nasty impedance coupled to severe negative phase shift.
The Saha's are effiecent at 91db, so they don't need a lot of watts, 50w-100w solid state will do, but it needs to be an amp that can almost double it's wattage down to 2ohm, which means it needs to be a high current amp.
eg:
100-8ohms
200w-4ohms
400w-2ohms

While tube amps will sound ok, your not going to get what the Sasha's are really capable of doing, esspecially in the bass and upper bass lower mids.
The Lamm 1.2 mosfet is a better amp for them than the 2.2 tube, but the speaker really want's an amp that can double it's wattage with each halving of impedance load all the way to down 2ohms. And this means an amp that can give more current than even a mosfet amp like the Lamm 1.2 can give.
They really want an amp with bi-polar output devices like the better big Krells, Mark Levinson's etc etc, that can really do the doubling wattage act all the way down to 2ohms.

Quote: Stereophile:
"Sasha's plot of impedance magnitude and electrical phase (fig.1) reveals the speaker to be a demanding load for the partnering amplifier to drive. Not only does the impedance drop below 4 ohms for most of the lower midrange and upper bass, with a minimum value of 2 ohms at 86Hz, but there is also an amplifier-unfriendly combination of 3 ohms and –43° phase angle at 61Hz." Quote

Cheers George

Tabu,

Georgelofi is absolutely right. Even Vladimir himself does not recommend any of his tube amps with the Sasha for the aforementioned reasons. He recommend his hybrid offerings instead.

 
Yes - the Lamm Ref 1.2 works quite nicely with the Sasha.

With its switch set for lower impedances the amp delivers 220 Watts into 2 Ohms and 400 Watts into 1 Ohm. On the higher impedance setting (which you probably would not choose for the Sasha, although you can) the M1.2 Ref yields 220 Watts into 4 Ohms, 400 Watts into 2 and 600 Watts into 1 Ohm. That’s all per the specs. Mr. Lamm acknowledges the M1.2 Ref is capable of delivering 770 Watts of power into a 1 Ohm load and he’ll tell you that not only can you use the amp as an arc welder, it will drive any speaker on the market.
 

The Lamm 1.2 in "1–6 ohms" operation will work quite nicely with the Saha's and sound good and an owner maybe quite happy, but they are still Mosfet, and they just don't do current like a BJT (bi-polar) transistor can.

To get the absoulte best out of the Sasha, a big amp like the 1.2 needed, but one that delivers big current, this means one that uses BJT (bi-polar) output devices should be used.

Cheers George