Your journey with lower-watt tube amps -- Can a kit be good enough?

@hilde45 

I know I sound like a broken record, I have had a lot of tube amps with my Klipsch Forte IVs and now my go to speakers are the Volti Razz, and never was satisfied until I took the leap and spent 5k on the First Watt Sit-4. With only 10 watts of class A it rocks my world. The music has a soul now and when my beautiful patience wife calls me for dinner I am always late wanting to play one more song. Forget about all those tubes, get it out of your mind…find one…I buy all my Pass and First watt from Jon at Refined Audio a awesome guy…call him…everything in the music is so sweet now with out worrying about a tube frying out…I am sure Jon will give you a audition time 30 days…

@armstrod -- thanks for your advice. Good to try before sinking in that time and money!

@dougthebiker -- Elekit! Thanks!
@paradisecom -- thanks for the ank link
@yaluaka -- thanks for the link to the other thread. I’d not seen it. I had a different way of framing the question and appreciate the feedback here and the dialogue with others, including you.
@silverfoxvtx1800 I have heard these speakers with the Pass XA25 and the Sit-3. I agree they sound lovely and though there are differences, the Pass sounds similar to my ears. I’m curious to see if these lower-powered tube amps sound, well, different. It sounds like you are at the stage where you want to just be done with trying gear and listen to one more song! That’s cool, but I’m still curious about the variety of sounds which my speakers can produce with new dance partners. I’m not ready to "set it and forget it." 
@earthbound -- Thanks for the advice. I listen to what you listen to, mainly. This amp will be an addition to other amps that can fulfill the needs of Metallica -- or Mahler, Wagner. I’m a critical listener, not moving around the room. So, if this amp (whoever she is) comes into my life, I will be using it for the kind of music which suits the design.

@clio09 Thanks for your reply. You said to listen to atmasphere, and he said "It won’t matter if the amp is handwired or circuit board as far as sound is concerned." You then pointed out, "The whole point to point vs circuit board argument has many intangibles that need to be considered. It’s not black and white." What "intangible" factor are you referring to?

@decooney Thanks for commenting. I’m not giving up my Pass XA25 or my QS Mono 60’s so I won’t be out on a limb with this next amp. I also know that these speakers have worked fine with SET amps in a room around my size, so it’s a question of finding the right amp for these speakers in my space with my other gear.

Have you checked out the offerings by bottlehead?

looking at bottlehead, yes

I have a full Bottllehead system, consisting of a BeePre 2 preamp, a Kaiju 8W power amp, a Mainline headphone amp, and an Eros 2 phono preamp. The BeePre and Kaiju use 300B tubes. I am running Bottlehead Jager speakers, which are 94 dB, and are voiced to work well with low-power SET setups. This is my main system, and I love how it sounds. I haven't done much in the way of modifying my kits from OEM, but lots of people upgrade their Bottlehead gear with boutique components. My secondary system consists of a Rega Elex Mk4, 72W integrated amp with Dynaudio Contour 20 speakers and a subwoofer. I find that I like the Bottlehead system at least as much as my SS system. It won't totally rock a large room at only 8W, but in my smaller space the Bottlehead SET system is very sweet and engaging.

Bottlehead kits come with awesome instructions, and their excellent forum provides the extra help one sometimes needs when assembling the kits. If you can solder and are at least a bit mechanically inclined, Bottlehead kits are a lot of fun to put together. I highly recommend them.