Tube Amp Recommendation

Although I'm not very experienced with tube equipment, I am aware that an OTL type amp may be the only tube-type design that can drive a load of that nature. The OTL designs use no output transformer, but instead have a cathode follower output tube so that they can drive lower-impedance loads with better stability & coupling. Joule Electra builds such a design; no doubt there are others as well.
Also refer to this thread "tube amp for a difficult load":
http://audiogo5.iserver.net/cgi-bin/fr.pl?aamps&1000150251&read&h24&zzlWellfed&&

Calvin,

I think you need to decide if you like Tubes or your existing speakers better. Because for $1500 used, you are not going to find a tube amp that can drive those speakers well. Especially when compared to a $1500 SS amp.

With more of a budget, I would suggest the ARC VT100 amp ($2500 or so used). This tube amp could drive the speakers pretty well.

Personally, in that price range, I would look at Monarchy solid state gear. The Monarchy SE100 Deluxes and the SE100 amps are great amps and sound a lot like tubes due to their Mosfet outputs.

or

A step up from Monarchy is Plinius SA100 mk3. This amp can be had used for $2200 (which is a virtual steal). Plinius is a world class amp that can only get better if you get two of them and go MONO.

Anyway, if you like tubes better than your speakers, I would suggest getting new speakers. If you like your speakers more, get a musical solid state amp like the Monarchy or Plinius gear, and I think you will be quite amazed.

This advice and a cup of coffee nets you a cup of coffee.

Peace.

Keith

Plato, Bob, and Keith,

Thanks for the quick response and information. There is no such thing as bad information and I appreciate it all; that's the only way to learn. I will research your recommendations and see if I can't improve things. Also, I was just reading on the Apogee forum page, that some one was using a Crown Micro amp. I know these amps have a pretty noisy fan, but they are suppose to deliver over 500 watts at 8 ohms and drive down to 2 ohms pretty easy. I just wonder about the quality of the sound.

Calvin

$1500 is really cutting off the kind of tube amp you need...around 100 watts per channel. The Sonic Frontiers Power 2 would be a good choice but they're going for around $2000 used, maybe a little less. You might also want to investigate an outboard auto-transformer which is essentially an impedance multiplier to make that difficult load more manageble. You find them here:http://www.condor-connection.org/asog/tweaks/ps/zero/index.html

Good luck...I think tubes and 'stats are the way to go, but you must be careful.

For a tubie sounding amp that can drive your Acoustat44,the Belles 350 is a good canditate. It is 250 watts per and very well built. The price is somewhere around $3500.00. This will also match your quicksilver tube pre-amp.