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Speaker Asylum General speaker questions for audio and home theater. |
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Speaker Asylum General speaker questions for audio and home theater. |
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In Reply to: Quad ESL57 amp matching posted by Adrian on March 12, 2000 at 19:18:19:
From 1980 - 1986 lived with the Quad 57s driven by a Marantz 7C / 8B combination -- running pentode. They sounded fantastic. Early on my youthful exuberance (e.g. lack of judgement) and the fact that they sounded so astonishingly good seduced me into attempting volumes that resulted in arching. Bummer. Not a cheap or convenient fix!I wish that I had been educated at that time to what the Marantz 8B would have sounded like wired in triode mode.... With 17 wpc the speakers likely would have been less subject to my abuse and the sound would have been even more refined.
I've had a bit more experience with different kind of amplification since then. I currently live with Wright 3.5 single ended 2a3 monoblocks -- superb sound from moderately efficient / easy load Reference 3a loudspeakers. I love the sound of single ended direct heated triodes. But I've never seen a substantive review that unconditionally raves about the combination of such an amp with the Quad 57 -- while I have seen much feedback indicating that these low powered, zero feedback amps would have a very tough time handling the load demands of that loudspeaker. Even if the amp was stable, my intuition tells me that the speaker load would act like a giant equalizer -- without ability for linear delivery of power or acoustic output.
That said, if the opportunity rose, one would certainly want to give a very stable SE direct heated triode amp a try.
However, my impression is that if direct heated triodes were a "flavor" that one wanted, a well designed push pull amp (300B / 2a3 / etc.) with 10 to 25 wpc would sound pretty amazing. A feature of such an amp that might be desirable would be the capacity to "dial in" some negative feedback (heresy!!!). Transformer coupling would be desirable.
Off the top of my head, manufacturers of such amps (and kits) include:
Cary (2a3) (and they used to make a pp 300B stereo amp which I owned...)
Sun (2a3, 300B, 6L6, KT-88)
Aprilsound (Tube-O-Saurus Rex, Feral Eye)
Valve Amplification Company (VAC) (300B)
Vacuum State Electronics
Manley made a 300B amp that could go pp / se with the flick of a switchThere must be many more...
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Follow Ups
- Quad 57 experience - Willie the Squid 03/14/0010:07:58 03/14/00 (0)
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