Carver 275 Crimson tube amp --- any feedback appreciated

@angelgz2   The best place for your amp question would be at the Martin Logan owners forum. Even with their feedback, I still would recommend auditioning before purchasing.

When I had e-stats years ago, I drove them with a 300w/ch SS amp - that double-downed. The speakers sounded pretty good - even with a dip down to 2ohms. I wanted to try tubes - so I purchased a pricey pair of triode push/pull monoblocks. With these monoblocks, the e-stats sounded slightly worse than coming from an empty Campbell’s soup can. I tried a pair of Speltz Autoformers, no improvement.

At an audio show, I visited a room by Roger Sanders Sound Systems. His 10e e-stats were driven by his Magtech amps with room correction. The sound was absolutely stunning. Far better than any other e-stat (and many other speakers) that I’ve heard. But, having owned e-stats in the past, the extremely narrow sweet spot was a deal-breaker. If you leave the listening chair, they just don’t sound good off-axis.

Angel,
Steakster has good advice.  I think you have it backward:  e-stats are power hungry and normally benefit from powerful ss amps.  The new ML's with internally powered subs are a different kettle of fish, but normally powerful amps like the Sanders amp are best employed with them.  

@steakster thank you for the detailed feedback! You may just have saved me $4,500 going for that Mcintosh 275. 

@whitestix yes I would think so, but despite this logic, I’ve heard from many places, including the ML owners forum that some people swear by tubes with ML. In fact, some older models, it actually says in the manual that they are best driven by “pure class A tubes”. I have had a tube amp before I owned any MLs and I tried it with a pair of Dynaudio Contours and it sounded horrible. I have since been reluctant to go tube again. 

Thanks
Cheers, happy holidays! 

Angelgz,
Well, I stand corrected on this compatibility issue.  These days, everything I seem to know is wrong.  I have a pal who has pretty large Tyler Acoustic's speakers that are nominally 4 ohms, but have frequency dips to under 2 ohms and he could not drive the speakers past 80 db with a 65 wpc Don Sachs KT88-based tube amp without congestion.  However, in my system with 12 ohm Spatial Audio M4 Triode Master speakers, his amp was fantastic, truly, just brilliant.  He bought a pair of Spatial Audio M3 Triode Master's and the amp is of course astonishing.   The variable between the speakers is the impedance difference, as far as I can tell.  Perhaps there are other variables.  Mark

 

Well I own the Carver Raven 350 mono blocks. And I used these amps with the new Bob Carver Amazing Line Source speakers. The amps got very hot and the amp meter was swinging very hard to the right, even at lower "rock" levels.
 
When I switched speakers (Focal Sopra 2) the amps now run very cool and the meter hardly moves.

Hard to believe such a mismatch in impedance with 2 current products from the same company.

ozzy