Budget SET or SEP recommendations?

Interesting discussion!

Whitestix--Right now, for this "project" I have Omega 3 HO (listed at 97.5db) and S.E.T. Sophia Princess Model 2 (listed at 88db). Plus a hodgepodge of other bookshelf/monitor, unlikely to be "tube-friendly" (at least on paper). Not sure how I feel about el84s for my first go-round, just based on preconception from a couple of guitar amps.

Mikirob-agree. the 280/V12 is awesome.


I think, right now, if I was to pull the trigger, I’d be between the Fire Bottle, Dynamo, and still one of the Decwares. I didn’t make it all the way through what seemed like an endless discussion on another forum on the Inspire. 6sl7 in the Dynamo sound like fun. I have a few to play with from rolling around CAD211fe.

I have a lot of tubes hanging around and tried some "still OK after some use" KT150s in the Had amp, but found the supplied GL KT88s sounded better somehow. I have some barely used Sovtek 88s, Tung Sol 6550s and more GL 88s, and I did buy a backup Amperex 6SN7GTB…I've sent another query to Had regarding the LP-3a preamp, and can only guess when or if he'll respond. Ebay messaging…meh...

The fire amp is not going to be biased high enough to run kt150's or even kt120's unless you have the model made for kt150.You could probably change some resistor values and bias the 150's with the proper voltage.

Being a member of a local audio club I have heard almost all of Dennis's amps and I liked the el84 version the best if you have the right speakers,the kt88 is good too.

Kenny.

I'd recommend looking at Don Sachs' custom-built KT88 amp.

Don will custom build to your specs so the price ranges between $2,495 and $3,199.

I have his 6NS7 based preamp and can attest to Don's attention to detail and craftsmanship.

Kdude66: When I bought the Fire Bottle amp, Dennis Had did respond to my question (via Ebay of course) regarding KT150s saying that my December 2016 amp would work fine using 150s. However, the GL KT88s sound so good with the Sonist speakers (and now that a new Morrow cable has spent the seemingly requisite 400 plus hours breaking in) I don’t really care about tube swapping at the moment. Actually I care (deeply), but I just don’t wanna. It’s my understanding that EL84s result in the amp producing around half the power available with other tubes…that might be wrong, but my brain is deluged with the hundreds of pages of discussion I’ve read about this amp so things are getting fuzzy…except in the amp. I just checked out the Don Sachs amps and they’re beautiful, but not Single Ended as per the gist of this conversation, unless I missed something (extremely likely).