Solid State Amps for Quad ESL 57?

Dhcod
Try a Quad 303, updated and modded by one of the pros.

Mrtennis, the only way I've seen proper bass out of Quads with transistors was when the panel was too close to the rear wall.
At the same time the highs were dreadful- harsh and lacking real speed. I have trouble believing something like that could be termed 'accurate'.

I use a rebuilt and updated 405. The only mod i did was replace the TLO71 with an opa227p (not just a drop-in replacement) and lower the sensitivity so it mated better with my Modulus 2A.
Magic for about $300!

I got reasonably good results with a Bedini 25/25 but would probably use tube amplification today.

I know everything Ralph has said in this thread is dead-on accurate (as always).

It really makes me wonder how some people (some people who DEFINITELY know what music sounds like such as Chesky) power their Quad 57s with the ASR amp. The Emitter is, indeed, a class 'voltage-paradigm' solid-state amp, with power output nearly inversely linear to impedance. Based on the Quad's impedance plot, it should sound terrible, but apparently it sounds excellent and perfectly balanced.

(6Moons also attests to this in their report on Robin Wyatt's system.)