Which Amp for Magnepan MG 3.6/R?

The subthread within this thread suggests that McIntosh with Maggies is a conflicted issue. I recall that when I was setting up my system a year ago, I was advised by a McIntosh dealer to avoid their amps with autoformers and instead get one without them - so I did. It (MC162) sounded OK, but another of their solid state amps with autoformers (MC352) sounded better and the tube-based MC2102 sounds better yet - despite the lower wattage. Just an observation for whatever its worth. Two of them may be even better or bi-amping with another type of amplifier...

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Bryston 4B-STs sounded good at my brother-in-laws during a recent audition. He had used c-j Premier 11s previously and I liked that combo too. A bigger tube amp would work better though. CAT preamp used.

I've had my MG3.6 for about 2.5 years now and have tried quite a few amps, though nothing super expensive (>$10K). I've never been completey happy with pure-tube or pure-SS driving them. You need either a very powerful tube amp with high damping factor (to control the bass), or a highly refined SS amp to avoid transistor harshness which WILL be revealed by these speakers. Among the tube amps already suggested above I'd add Wolcott monoblocks, which sound pretty good on the 3.6. As for Pass-X amps, IMO they sound too lean and cool, though very refined (I like Aleph better). I think panel speakers tend to sound lean anyway and need some "body" in the midrange. I've tried Belles 350A: it sounds tube-like (full midrange) but not as liquid in the upper mids.
In the end, the best strategy for MG3.6 is active biamping (bypassing the external passive xover box). This has allowed me to experiment with different amps for bass and mid/hi. The speakers really open up and dynamics improve. Bit of a hassle to match amps though, and you need to introduce an active crossover between preamp and amps. (There are a lot of threads on Audio Asylum about this.) I'm using a Marchand 3-way xover, since I send the lowest frequencies to a sub, which greatly relieves the Maggies of trying to reproduce <40Hz.
I've tried many amp combos for driving the bass (40-250Hz) and the mid/hi (250Hz-up) sections of the MG3.6, and among my favorite have been Bryston 4Bst on bottom with Belles 350A on top (nearly equal gain amps); also two Llano Design Trinity hybrid tube/SS amps, using a tube-type in each amp that is best suited for that freq. range. (The Llano's are my current setup.)
Again, I'd suggest wandering through the AA planar speaker archives, where many opinions on driving MG3.6 can be found. Good luck!

Second the Bryston 4b-st...a buddy has this combo with his 1.6s...and it is sweet...Bryston have a tendency to really bring out the best in planar bass...speed,definition,and with this much juice...pretty good dynamic "punch"...some have commented on Bryston being a bit "hard" sounding on vocals...I haven't had that experience...they are very nuetral...and ofcourse...legendary build quality...

I third McIntosh. I have heard the smaller Magnepans (2.?) with a McIntosh MC202 and it was beautiful. Tireguy's dealer comments are dumb IMO. Any amp has issues with bad speaker impedance curves but there are some darn good engineers that spend their time and effort to design it so that it is stable into that low load, and that is what we are paying good money for. If all you had to do was toss transistors together, anyone would be building amps but the trick is to make them stable. When you pay thousands of dollars for an amp, it will be stable with a Magnepan load unless it is a really sucky design and some may not like McIntosh but will concede it is not a crappy design. Besides they are autoformer coupled which is a buffer to the devices so if anything, the McIntoshes will be more stable than brand x. Anyway, sorry for ranting.

There are past posts on Maggies and McIntosh where many responses support my feeling on it. Search the archives and see. McIntosh isn't the only good one of course, include Pass and Classe too IMO. Arthur