Need amp suggestion for PBN Montana EPS2.

Agree that the MAC 501s roll the other direction from bright, but if that was a problem for your ear, the older MAC stuff like the 352, have less emphasis on the top end.

From what you had said about the deficiencies of the Brystons keeping them from being satisfactory, I'm betting you will favor the Plinius sound. Do let us know as I am checking into this thread from time to time....

I have success with Nuforce Reference 9V3's running with EPS-2's. Possibly their new Reference 18's might be what you are looking for.

The happy end !!!
I was very lucky to find the amp of my dreams.
A Mark Levinson 336 now rests on the rack and feeds the Montanas with 350W.
We are all, the gear and me, very happy.
Thank you all for your participation.

Vlassis

I have the Montana XPs and I need to try a different front-end. I find the sound quite hard at times. Some of that is certainly the room, some of it is the recordings but I have had the speakers in three different rooms and it just gets fatiguing after awhile. So, I need to try and address the room as much as practical, but, honestly, I don't want my nice room(s) marred by the look of much of the current crop of room treatments out there.

Maybe room correction will help. Speaker placement. Maybe it's a synergy issue but first things first.

Vlassiss,

Glad you found amps that work for you. I'm more impressed by my EPS2s as my system evolves. They are remarkably neutral and resolving speakers that let all upstream components shine.

Finsup,

Maybe you should experiment with speaker cables. I just shotgun bi-wired my PBNs with single crystal copper, 8 ga on the bottom, 12 ga on top. It really evened out the tonal balance, adding warmth and presence and eliminating some slight hardness. Before, I was using lighter gauge silver clad copper. The woofers needed more current relative to the tweeters/mids and the silver was giving a slight edge. I don't know the XPs and YMMV but it's worth experimenting. I find the EPS2 to be very neutral and revealing, which can mean hardness in some cases, if hardness is upstream.