Klipsch Cornwall III with Bryston 4B SST2 / BP17 ?

Class A rated amps always mated well with my Corwalls & Heresey's. The Bryston has more power than you could ever use but it is not a "bright" sounding amp. I'd try it.

I don't think the Bryston would be my first choice (power overkill perhaps for those speakers), but I have to believe it is up to the task and can be made to work quite well. The key will be teh room acoustics and what is needed upstream to feed the Bryston for teh results you are looking for.

You'll need a good tube pre-amp and some warm cables (Cardas 300B or Kimber PBJ) if you want to use that combo. It still might be a bit too etchy. The corns really like some nice tube power.

I would strongly agree with Viridian and Mapman - this would be WAY more power than those speakers would ever need, and I would add that this would really be contrary to the design of the speaker to put that much power through it. I'm not saying you have to use a flea-watt amp with them (in fact, the great thing about high-efficiency speakers is you can pretty much drive them with anything you want), but they will mate much better with tubes for sure. IME, most of the people who bitch about horn speakers being bright or shrill are the same people who insist on pumping hundreds of watts through them....I drive my Cornwall 2's with a tube amp that does between 21 and 35 watts per channel, and you could get away with as little as 8 watts, I would think. Possibly even less.

There`s no harm in trying this combination and just listen and decide. Everthing I`ve ever read or heard about these speakers suggest low-moderate power tube amplifiers are a much better direction to go. It does not seem your amp will give the best this speaker has to offer.
Regards,

As a past owner of the Cornwall and the Khorn, I would also agree that your best bet is a lowish watt tube amp. IMHO, SS and high power are not a good match for these speakers. They will surely be on the bright side and you'll want to end you're listening secessions early.

I agree with Elevick. I power my III's with Parasound SS and like the results very much. I bought it after an A-B comparison with a very good tube amp. I'm also a musician who loves accuracy and the sound of "live" music. To each his own, but to my ears too many tube amps mute (dumb down) the highs in music. Might add that I'm not anti-tubes. My Hammond B-3 uses a 122 Leslie which contains a great tube amp. Most tubes, however, don't work for me when it comes to reproducing sound. These are generalizations and YMMV. Cheers to all!

Hey Jamo1, try it, and if you don't like it, try another speaker. I run my JBL S4700s (which have horn compression drivers for the mids/highs) with a Bryston amp and preamp, and the results aren't too bad at all. What you might wanna try is tubes on the mids/highs and the Bryston on the woofers. That could very well be the ticket. Also, the JBLs are rated up to 300 W, and to get those woofers moving you need power, imo. I'm not too familiar with Klipsch so I can only go by specs. According to Klipsch, it can handle 400 W peaks, so the Bryston would be ok. You probably wanna put them on stands since they're only 35" tall.

Thanks all for the responses. I purchased the Bryston to go with some other speakers (still waiting for the bryston to be built) but I have a pair of Cornwalls boxed up in the basement that I had used with 300B and KT88 amps. I am sure that curiosity with take over and I will eventually try them together. Just alot of effort to get those boxes upstairs unpacked and put in place just to find out they cleary do not work with Bryston. It sure would be loud enouph wouldn't it.

Congrats on your purchase. Yes, it's gonna be more than loud enough! :)