Tubes and less sensitive speakers

I thought I heard Atmasphere amps can work well with Maggies but could be wrong.  Worth checking or maybe @atmasphere can chime in. 

@soix We have a number of customers using our OTLs with Maggies. The smaller amps like the M-60 tend to be used with the smaller Maggies in tandem with a set of ZEROs. The bigger Maggies like the 3.7 might have MA-1s. Willard Diller of Magnaplanar used to make a point of telling me the best he ever heard the MG20s was with a set of our MA-2s.

At any rate, if you want the best out of the tube amp, whatever it is, it makes quite a difference to keep the speaker cables as short as possible. To this end I've seen 8 inches of really heavy cable (8 gauge) make an enormous difference in how the amp made bass impact as opposed to 6 feet of a regular cable! But to do that you need monoblocks so you can put the amp right behind the speaker so its speaker terminals are as close to the speakers as possible.

Rogue Audio amps have prodigious bass and slam for tube amps, and are a great value per dollar. Especially as you step up to M180 monos or (even better) the discontinued Zeus and Apollos

I haven’t heard Maggies myself, but hear from others I trust this is a favorable pairing. I even know a dealer who prefers big Rogue amps on Maggies over (much more expensive) ARC amps (the ARC Reference preamps are much better than Rogue’s RP line, though - IMO and others too).

The downside to Rogue tube amps is they won’t have a "tubey" midrange like many other tube amps. They can sound sort of like a hybrid between tubes and SS, though they’re all tube. But the bass, dynamics and power - wow.

I'm very familiar with Maggie 3.6s. I would not recommend a tube amp for these. Although some of the bigger powerhouses sound good but with lots of heat and heft. Your Hegel is probably a decent amp.  I would add a tube pre-amp, a good one. 

If I was you I’d strongly consider Atmasphere’s GaN amp (no affiliation with the company BTW).  You’ll get a lot of the tube sound with solid state bass control and none of the tube hassle, heat, or expense.  I think you can even do a trial period with them, which would seem to be a no brainer to me.  Put a good tube pre in front of it and that could be a magical combo.  That’s what I’d do anyway FWIW.  Best of luck. 

@boxcarman - Magnepans are typically very inefficient and require high current amps to get the best out of them.  This is why most amp recommendations for Maggies are on the solid state side.  Not to say there aren’t tube amps out there that sound good with them (I will differ to @atmasphere as more of an expert on that subject). 

There are a lot of older threads on Audiogon that go into this in greater detail.  I’d search through them and spend some time reading.

@russ69 does have a good suggestion on using a tube preamp with a solid state amp or even a hybrid amp with a tube input section, to keep the tube sound in the mix.

... my 2 cents....