Tube amp for "difficult" speakers,,,

I forgot to say, a Velodyne DD18 with a sand bag on top. I love these tweaks that are cheap and make a clear improvement on the sound...Thanks Tvad, I will.

listen to some manley neo classic 500s or older reference 500s I dont think some of the other suggestions on this thread will drive your speakers adequately

Which amps mentioned would you not recommend and why? I'm interested to learn the reasoning.

I dont have personal experience with your speakers but I have pretty inefficent speakers myself and have owned the Rm9 (not special edition) and Vac ren 70/70 both great amps but were a little lifless compared to the manleys my experience is that there is no shortcut you need alot of output tubes and massive transformers( I also owned joule grand marquis.) If you are moving from solid state I think the others will leave you a little underwhelmed unless you get a more efficent pair of speakers. But no doubt a tube amp is the way to go!

The Music Reference RM9SE might work as it puts out 200 watts into 4ohms (from the 8 ohm tap on the amp), versus the 65 watts of the RM9 MKII. While it doesn't double power like an SS, it is a tube amp capable of lot's of power into low impedances compared with traditional tube amps. Another tube amp that I think would do the job would be a CAT JL2 - talk about BIG transformers... A tube amp won't do the bass quite like SS does, but I think a worthwhile tradeoff (that you keep to a minimum)with tube amps like the one's mentioned, including the large Manley's.