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A couple of thoughts

aurelbtz,

When you write you'd like to "improve" your system, it reads as though the maintenance is the principle problem. The components you have are in my view some of the best ever. Actually, I think of the M100's as among Audio Research's best three of four amplifiers ever and the SP10 is also one of the best ever. I use an SP10 with a D115- more or less the stereo version of the M100's. For me, your system is almost ideal-I should think with the Koetsu, Versa, and Quad 57's the sound would be fantastic.

With anything, that's near the top of performance, the maintenance will be fussy and expensive. I recently retubed my SP10 and if I were to buy the tubes used in today's markets- Amperex / Valvo 7308's and Tungsram 6922's- this might be in the range of $1,000-1,200.

So, if the sound is great but the fuss factor is fatiguing, the task would be to of course to find some less twitchy components. If the M100's don't please, I'd suggest considering a solid state power amplifier, and since the Quad 57's get along well with 100W, I'd say look into the Audio Research 100.2- one of ARC's best solid state designs. The 100.2 is solid state and wonderfully dynamic, transparent, refined, energetic- plus you can probably run it for 30 years without troubles. Bonus! -You can also sell the M100's for about $800 more than a good 100.2 will cost.

Cheers,

Bambi B

[ ARC: SP8, SP10, LS3, D115, D130 ]


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  • A couple of thoughts - Bambi B 05/22/1018:03:49 05/22/10 (0)

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