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Spectron Musician III - Can anyone comment on it?

I am currently on the hunt for a pair of amplifiers that have massive peak power capability with excellent micro dynamics and neutral presentation. I am driving a pair of Martin Logan Statement E2's

The Spectron Musician has been reviewed exceptionally well everywhere I looked and seems to fit the bill but I just can't get over 25 years of snobbery telling me to avoid switching amps because linear amps just sound better and, hey, the name on the faceplate ain't Krell or Mark Levinson!

Can I PLEASE get a few people with experience listening to these amps tell me why I should or shouldn't buy them?

I desperately want to buy a pair of the BAT VK-600SE's since I own mostly all BAT equipment but to produce, say, 110db peaks one would comfortably need several thousands watts of power in the bucket to meet the challenge. I don't think the BAT amps have that under the hood.

Advice?
sashua
dob
577 posts
 
Hello Russ,

1 Their Remote Sense cable is better then all inexpensive -to medium price cables but is inferior (in some respects) to true high end cables like Valhalla and similar so I do not recommend them.

2 Set up at the top: If Simon suggest you to bi-wire then he must mean to use two amps in monoblocks configuration. You can use the same amps both in mono and in stereo mode so you can do and compare yourself what is the best for you
a) monoblocks with bi-wire or
b) stereo in bi-amp
Same two amps, same two sets of speaker cables

With BAT, however, you would need to send them to factory to reconfigure every time you want to go from stereo to mono

Upgrades - I don't know if anyone can tell you where they will be better : at the top or bottom. I have them. I love them - its question of the budget, on my opinion

All The Best
Rafael
bostonbean
241 posts
 
I believe you can order the Spectron built for mono only so that you do not need to do anything outside the amp like y-cables or anything like that. talk to Simon for more info. As far as upgrades I see Rafael has weighed in but also check with Terryakhan. He has 3 of these amps all with the upgrades and looking to go with a 4th.

Going with upgrades on an amp that is just going to drive the bass doesn't make much sense imho.
tedmbrady
208 posts
 
My $.02 I would run monoblock config on the tweet/mid towers, with good biwired speaker cables. I demo'd the Remote Sensing cables and they are very nice, but my wonderful Synergistic Research Tesla Accelerator biwires beat them in almost every category....at 3x the price of course.

Then I would start with a stereo MK 2 on the bass towers and see how that goes. A stereo Spectron is no slouch, especially when all it has to do is one thing.
philefreak
416 posts
 
Just got my Spectron Musician II SE and it's been running about an hour or so. I got this amp to run a second system with Dali Helicon 400MK IIs. My main rig is homemade horns that use an active crossover using a PX4 SET amp on top and a digital amp on the bottom. In just one hour of listening to the Spectron on the Dali's has got me second guessing horns and SETs. Maybe I'm smitten with something different at the moment but, I have to remember that this rig has only been playing an hour. I don't like the binding post. A real pain in the butt if you biwire. Plus, I don't use terminations so bare wire is a real treat to make fit tight. I told Simmon that this kind of amp should have two sets of binding post! So far, so good. A little edgy on attacks for now but I'm sure that after some break in it will be just fine. It's already competing with my favorite ss amp.
dob
577 posts
 
Hello Philefreak,

Thank you for your post. I coudn't stand the amp during first 100-200 hours! I am glad you like it but in a a month or so you simply will not recognize the sound.

I also agree with you that Cardass patented bining post is a pain in a .... Some people like it, I don't but its really small detail.

For the point of comparison - what is your favorite ss amp?

Thank you
Rafael
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