George:Mcintosh literature reports 450 watts across 8,4 and 2omhs.Sadly, i have never heard the 452 bought it at the urging of a friend who loves Mac’s.
Looked at both, and though I’m not a believer in having output transformers on solid state amps, yes both the 450 and the 452 have 4ohm speaker taps and should be fine, they both even have 2ohm taps and that could be even tighter and controled in the bass than the 4ohm, try both.
My pick out of the list you posted, would be the Ayre MX-R first Bat VK-600SE second, Pass third.
"The MXR input impedance was extremely high, at least 1 megohm even at 20kHz: The MX-R won’t load down the partnering preamplifier at all."
Which means all forms of sources or preamps will be perfect match with this, source direct, tube pre’s, solid state pre’s, passive pre’s and tvc pre’s
Cheers George
