anybody have/hear Wolcott with dynamic speakers?


I invite your listening experiences of Wolcott particularly with I guess any dynamic, cone driver speaker. I am aware of their ability with planar and electrostats.

I have Genesis V's and another pair of 3 way cone speakers, and am considering buying Wolcott P220M's. I will get a chance to listen to the amps on Wilson Sophias in the next week or so, and would appreciate any comment before then. Also how hot and how reliable are they relative to any other valve mono?--I have never owned valve amp before and hope to light up the magic in the Genesis V's--more than my s/s amp can do . As ever all comment is much appreciated.
aer

Showing 2 responses by slipknot1


Disclaimer: I am a Wolcott owner and use them to drive Magnepan 3.6Rs. I had an opportunity to listen to them before purchasing them with a pair of WATT/Puppies. To me it was a dissappointing combination. Jtinn's use of the word "diffuse" pretty much sums up my impressions with the Wilsons. Henry Wolcott voices his amps with an eye for them to drive the Soundlab and Magnepan panel loudspeakers.

As to their reliability - they are very well built, and use the EL34 tube. They also have an auto-bias feature that biases all eight tubes each time the amp is powered up, then takes itself out of the circuit. This keeps your tubes at optimum and also allows you to replace tubes as needed, without having to replace with matched sets (unless of course you want to). The Wolcott amps are capable of producing lots of current and prodigious bass, even with difficult loads like the Magnepan.

While I would not claim to speak of the synergy the wolcott would have with the Genesis line, never having heard it, I was not overwhelmed with the Wilson pairing. Most Wolcott users are panel speaker owners. Before investing (a new pair ain't cheap), I would try to get the amps into YOUR room, with YOUR speakers.
My above post indicated that I was using the Wolcott P220 mono with wide band transformer and bias circuit upgrade to drive Magnepan 3.6R.

I can now report that I am very happy using the same Wolcott amps to drive Kharma Ceramique 2.2 loudspeakers, a much more efficient load than the Magnepan. Bass control is excellent, very tight and well extended. The midrange magic that the Kharma is famous for is there in spades too.