Powerful Tube Amp for SF Strads?


I am looking for recommendations for a powerful tube amp for my Strads. A powerful tube amp which truly excels at palpability, musicality but also has very good bass control (though bass control is not as 'mission critical' to me as palpability).

My current amp (see below) sounds great to my ears!...but runs out of steam much too soon.

My system today:

Zanden 5000S DAC
CJ Act 2
CJ MV60 (EL 34 tube)
SF Strads (4ohms, 92db sensitivity though impedence does dip to 2.5ohms)
Velodyne DD-18 (run in parallel)
Transparent Ref/Ref XL cabling throughout
Purist Audio Dominus PC

In addition to recommendations, any thoughts are welcome on Wavac, Audio Note, Zanden, VTL, CJ LP275...or monoblocking MV60 (EL34)? Thanks!

Lloydelee21
lloydelee21

Showing 1 response by mechans

I must say that is quite a challange. A tube amp with moderately resistive speakers but not near the tubes output impedance, instead it drops precipitously and creating a worsened output mismatch and less power.
Hmmm.
There is an easy fix. Simply buy the tube amp with a monster power supply and if possible an output coupler. In common terms this means get a tube amp with the biggest transformers you can and ignore total or rms wpc. Those watts mean nothing. My 60 wpc Jadis DA-60 just doesn't clip although I haven't tried to make it explode it handles everything I want it to. Also The Kilovolt power trannie 211 or 845 PP amps provide plenty of foundation. Honestly That is where the music is -in the trannies once the major obstacles are met then subtleties can come in and do their thing.
Thus I congratulate you on the wisdom of thinking Wavac and LLam. Those are perfectly good examples of "transformers make the music."