Best amps for MBL101e's?

I cannot speak for their ability to drive your specific speakers, but I have Ayre MX-Rs on another very difficult load - Sound Lab A-1s. The Sound Labs have never sounded better, in my opinion. Great amps. I too used tube gear for many, many years. I don't miss them.

to all.. thanks for your great posts, as I mentioned earlier, I bought the 9011's and right now am trying to search for best speaker cables. Curriemt11... that is a bold statement that you don't miss tube amps at all. I have previously found both Ayre and Pass to come close to tubes, but not quite having the magic, while losing the bass slam of solid state and the highs of solid state. Maybe the mxr's are better.

If I end up really not being able to live with the 9011s I would loveto try the atmasphere.

To Athmaspere:
Thank you immensely. Its always nice then manufacturer come to us and explain things. My question to you is that one report is adenoidal i.e. the user (whose opinion I should fully trust) may use the amp/speaker combo for small scale music, could have small listening room, could.....
I know that there is a group, almost a club, of Spectron/MBL owners whose group opinion is NOT anecdotal. I myself do not own MBL but I listed it with Spectron and Einstein preamp in front. The sound was "to die for".
Thanks you very, very much again. - just last question if I may, the MSRP of Spectron is $6.5k and your amp is..?

Hi Dob, FWIW our customer found that the MA-2 ($32,000) ran the speaker so well that he became quite curious as to what our preamps did, and bought one of those (MP-1, $10,300) so his system is all-tube. Apparently he had done solid state, and then went to tubes in short order, and after about a year of trying different amps, found us about a year ago. He still has the equipment now so I guess it does what he was looking for. He says he likes to play things loud, but what that means to one person is something else to another.

When I started reading this thread tonight my first reaction was MA-2.

My older MA1's seem to drive anything I throw at them, even impedances which are supposed to be mismatched for OTL's.

I have heard the MBL101 a number of times over the years, and have enjoyed their evolution in quality.

This past show in NYC I thought the 101's were clearly being overdriven in the large room they were in. I mentioned that to the MBL rep, that the sound had a hard quality on louder passages I had never head in the speakers before.

I wonder if anyone else noticed the same?

The purity of OTL I think would make a great sonic partner to such a revealing, holographic and musical speaker, and the MA2's should clearly have enough muscle to do that.

I wouldn't doubt one of Ralph's customers has found a fantastic match. I'd even be curious to hear MA2 (or 1's) up top and SS on the bottom.

I recently went to a system like this and love the flexibilty of an ajdustable gain remote amp on the bottom to tailor the amount of bass needed from cut to cut help complete the illusion of live music at the current listening level.