Tubes with Thiel CS-3.6's? has anyone had success?

Hey, anything will produce a sound, but I don't expect that sound would be for me. You're honestly the first person I've heard of running these speakers with a low-powered SET - what else have you used? (Unless you're having us on, that is... ;^)

TT's with big speakers of low efficiency, unless you listen at ambient levels in the 80db range, and noise ambient in a quiet house is at 70db's. Hmm, I don't think thats a good match. Remember headroom will consume at least 10 times the nominal power so with a SET you limited to listening at about 0.5 watts nominal and 5 watts for the peaks. Which means on a low efficiency speaker about 78-83 db nominal.

Current output for the bass simply cannot be there.

I recommend a lager toob amp. The VTL 100 compacts can be found for well under a G but plan on another 200$ to upgrade the toobs, and 300 if you want to upgrade the caps on the output stage, if you can do it yourself.

In anycase when you try it, don't give up the SS amp until your convinced that you've made the right move.

jeff

Be careful about resistance. The 3.6 tend to drop well below 4 ohms and are not too efficient. You should have a tube amp with 2 ohm taps and a fair amount of power. You could kill a 50 watt tube amp with 4 ohm taps if you listen long/hard/loud.

Thank you all for the input so far.
I know all too well how the 3.6's are demanding speakers at higher volumes and extreme dynamics. In my insane search for absolute resolution and clarity in dymanics it took the mighty MDA-500's to totally blow me away. Unrestrained power and impact was amazing and resolution was beyond my expectations. My hearing is a precious thing to me being a musician and has lowered my listening levels in the past year. So now the MDA-500's are major room heaters and not needed (but truly loved) in my room. I kinda knew going into this that more power would be the obvious but wondered if anyone had tried an integrated tube amp without any major faults or failures. I'm encouraged to hear that Gs5556 has used a pair of 2A3 amps and surprised at the same time.

I know that I'm giving up the control and authority of the Krell's but really want to hear the sonics and warmth that tubes can offer. The Krell's will be with me always as a known combo with the 3.6's, But the levels of playback are kept much lower now and musical taste has shifted back over to acoustic, classical and sweet vocals.

Thanks all,
Bruce

Zaikesman: I am not having anyone on... I would never do that, especially here. I purchased the 2A3 amps to use with my DIY single-driver speakers I'm building. In the meantime, I hooked them up to my Thiels - yes, they do make more than enough SPL levels for classical/jazz for my ears in my room. But, the CAT preamp has a signal gain of 24 db which goes a long way in making them work the way they do for me. Granted, they cannot handle orchestras, rock, choral, pipe organs, etc., but string quartets and the such come through loud and clear. Heck, even symphonies are handled for the most part satisfactorily. I'll dust off my Radio Shack sound level meter and post back what I get at my normal listening levels.

My mainstay amps that I currently use with the Thiels are a pair of Mark Levinson 20.6 monoblocks (100W ea). I'm not saying that all SET's work for everybody's setup the same, but don't outright dismiss low power, high dynamic headroom SET's with 86 db/2.83V/4 ohm speakers - especially that most listening levels in a lot of living rooms are produced by far less power than one would think. But if you're tastes lean towards shaking the walls... and, to recall, this thread stated that "... volumes are kept very low..."