OTL Tube Amp for Maggie 3.6?

Response34, I had a push pull amp from McAlister Audio back in 2005 (believe it was called something 140, 70 watts/channel). Problem with his amp was very poor build quality, although the sound was good. The output transformers had laminations missing that was filled in with small pieces of metal and was caked with this greenish stuff that looked like it was oxidized from years of use. The soldering job was by far the worst I have ever seen, looked like a 10 year old had at it. Speaker binding posts were completely loose when it came to me. Fortunately it cost only around $1600 at the time. I was not the first who had issues with build quality of his amps. I sold it after less than 1 year of use for about $700, but it broke down less than a week after sale. He is now charging close to $9000 for his OTL amp. The outside cosmetics has been upgraded, but I hope he has vastly improved his build quality and reliability for this amount of money. He can take a lesson from the build quality and reliability of Atma-Sphere amps. BTW I have no financial or personal affiliation with Atma-Sphere.

there's a lot of hearsay in this thread, so I won't refrain from adding mine:

A good friend of mine has successfully used Maggies with two ZH270 by David Berning - nowadays you might want to go with the Quadrature Z, that would be heaven!

Said friend later changed to Ambience speakers, but the Bernings are still there..

03-25-11: Rushton
While an Atma-Sphere MA-1 certainly works with the Magnepan 3.6 speakers, particularly in smaller rooms and at lower volumes, these speakers absolutely shine when driven by the Atma-Sphere MA-2. A marvelous combination.
Rushton (Reviews | Threads | Answers | This Thread)

I will give a hearty second to Rushton's suggestion. He and I listened to his MA-2s on my 3.6Rs and it was a marvelous combination in a medium sized room (16.5 x 23)

Glad to see someone going down this road. I ran 3.6's with my VZN 160's. I have very fond memories of it. I had the OTL's driving them full range and even bi-amped them with various amps for just the bass panel, including the H2O ice audio class d amp. My recollection is that the biamping of the 3.6's in this manner was overkill for that speaker. I much preferred running the 3.6 at full range and augmenting that set up with a sub. As a Maggie enthusiast, I also augmented the 3.6 with Tympani bass panels (single pair and double)driven with the H2O. That was a good system for a while. I always ran the OTL's with the zeros. I don't think I ever turned the volume past 12 o'clock. OTL and ribbons are a glorious sound. But for the lack of imaging, I'd still have that system.

If you are trying to stay below 6K, then perhaps you may need to change your mindset of using OTL's with a pair of Maggie 3.6's. For a beefy enough OTL to create the dynamic swings, and loudness to make these particular speakers sing and swing, I think you are going to be out of your budget. A few suggestions made here for OTL's seem to be way out of your price range, and the few that are close, may not supply all of the power you require. I do not know about you, but I like to play my music at real volumes, not as background music, so having the ability to play louder is important to me, along with the ability to explode dynamically when necessary.

Generally speaking, most users on the forum suggest matching amps to speakers, the Maggies are no exception. The trend in the forums for Maggies seem to suggest high current and beefy power supplies, something you are not going to get with smaller wattage OTL's. I am sure that the Zero's may aid in some cases regarding matching impedance and ohms, something I would like to experiment with, but, how do you get around for the lack of power and or reserves necessary to make music come alive with small power supplies?

If I were you, I would experiment not just with OTL, but, with other options, such as hybrid and push pull.

If you are dead set on an OTL solution, then please evaluate and provide us with your findings regarding dynamic range, explosive power, and how loud you could play without sound degradation before the amp ran out of power.

It would be interesting to hear some feedback of users using lower watt OTL’s with this particular speaker and how loud they play them.

Ciao,
Audioquest4life