Best power amp for Quad 63

no doubt well made otl’s are especially well suited to drive esl’s be they quads, sanders, soundlabs, m-l's and so on

such amps do require quite a commitment from the owner, and some may shy away from these amps running with many many power tubes to maintain

i have had very good luck (and wonderful sound) with my trusty arc 100.2 on my esl63’s

furthermore one can also use a nice tube pre in front of a zero maintenance ss power amp...

Big thanks to everyone!  

• Atma Sphere M-60: I wanted this amp so bad but I didn't have enough for those and the Quad 63. Someday.
• I really like the Spectral and your advice on doing my diligence.
• I also like the idea of another preamp.  
• But, this is my favorite:
  

  richopp

  "You want more HIGHS with Quad's???"

  "Well, my advice is a Phase Linear 700 from the old days.  It is as shrill as they get, and with the shrillness of the Quad's, you should be happy.

  If you are my age, over 70, your high frequency hearing may be slightly less than it used to be...maybe get it checked?

  Cheers!"

Yes Rich, I had three years of six nights a week experience with two Phase Linear 700s, a Crown amp and a tri-amp sound system. They worked great for that application but were never allowed in my house. We ran two ESS AMT super tweeters and was recently excommunicated for mentioning using a dipole ribbon with the Quads.

I earned a living as a professional musician for over 20 years and played many genres but mostly classical. Now play in a British style Brass Band near Washington,DC. Shrill, you say. That is definitely the sound for a classical instrumentalist. Right?

I will agree that I am 70 and could have some upper frequency loss but my recent hearing test proved otherwise. 

In closing I would like to use a phase commonly used in the southern USA.

"Bless your heart!'

+1 fortepiano50

Re:Shrill... Yes.. what you said...

Keep loving your Quads and I would echo the recommendation for Quad amps.

@fortepiano50

I’ve been meaning to add my .02 here for a few days, but have been busy.

I’m sure that many of the recommendations above will sound good. The OTL amps, in particular, will have a certain magic. I auditioned a pair of well-regarded Futtermans and thought they were great. But I was put off by the potential hassle of re-tubing those amps.

I also owned, and really loved, a Sanders Innersound Electrostatic amp. This was a circa ~2000 version of his current Magtech amp. It sounded awesome.

However, I caution folks about using a Sanders amp with any Quad ESL which has the "crowbar" protection circuit. The protection circuit is basically a dead short. It results in the amplifier dumping its prodigious power into the dead short in an instant, which basically can destroy the amp. Ask me how I know. This requires sending the amp to Coda for repair and service.

My very strong recommendation is to use one of the Quad amps - I’m now using a 909 and am very satisfied. It’s the only amp in the world designed to work with the protection circuit. It isn’t flashy. Not expensive. But an extremely fine all-rounder. Won’t have the transparency of the OTL amps, but substitutes rock solid reliability for that last little tiny bit of detail. That tradeoff is worth it, in my book.

The advantage of an OTL on this speaker is due to the very high impedance the speaker has in the bass. This peak is not due to resonance. Solid state amps will throttle back their power into this impedance and so getting the speaker to play bass with solid state is problematic.

OTLs OTOH can make power easily into this higher impedance, which works well with the electrostatic characteristic. A lot of our customers have commented that with our amps they don't need subs to make convincing bass.

ESLs in general do not obey the same design rules that box speakers do. Most box speakers are designed around the idea of being 'voltage driven' which is to say that the amp driving them can act as a 'voltage source'; being able to make the same voltage regardless of the load impedance. ESLs work better with an amp that makes constant power with respect to load impedance. For that you need a tube amp with no feedback so its output impedance is high enough for this to occur (you can also do this if voltage and current feedback in the amplifier are done in equal amounts, but this is very rare in amplifiers!).

For more on this topic see:

http://www.atma-sphere.com/en/resources-paradigms-in-amplifier-design.html