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Best Balanced Tube Amp To Pair With Meridian G02?

As the Subject title says, I am trying to decide what my best options are insofar as my best options for power amps to pair with the Meridian G02 preamp. I was just able to get one in mint condition, with warranty, at a steal of a price.

I want to pair this with a tubed power amp that has great soundstage, that classic midrange magic, and a rich, but not slow, or rolled off sonic character. Ideally, I would also want a balanced tube amplifier, as the Meridian is maximized for balanced performance, although it will handle single ended.

What would you recommend? My max budget for the power amp is about $3000.00, used, to maximize my buying power. Of course, less is always fine too.

Thanks for any expertise, recommendations or assistance.

Specifications for the G08 are included in the link:

http://www.meridian-audio.com/data/G02_ds_scr.pdf (Open in New Window)
nightfall
atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
7,068 posts
 
Nightfall, there is another alternative. Its possible to operate our amps with less than the full complement of power tubes. So if you have a set of M-60s, you could run them with 4 or 6 power tubes instead of 8.

The M-60 was also made in the long chassis. It was known as the M-60 MkII.3.
ckoffend
684 posts
 
Ralph, I had seen a similar comment in an ad listing that your amps do not require all of the tubes to be installed to operate. Is there a minimum number of tubes, ie. half or something like that which is required? Is this true of all tube amps (for the power tubes at least)?

I would love to own one of your amps, sound fantastic but I always think to myself, how much does it cost to replace all those tubes? Which may say just as much about my ability to afford one of your beautiful sounding amps.
atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
7,068 posts
 
Ckoffend, you can usually run the amp with half the power tubes. Its a good idea to derate one of the power fuses but that is easy- just change the fuse. This is not something you can do with any tube amp BTW.

The tubes are inexpensive since they do not require matching.
nightfall OP
133 posts
 
Ralph, is the S-30 equal in sound quality to the M60's? I read something a while back that stated that, other than the wattage differences, all Atmasphere power amplifiers had the same sound quality.

Just wondering as I wait for either the M60's MkII.3, or an S-30 MK.II to show up for sale. I would then plan to send the unit(s) to you to upgrade to 3.1 status.
nightfall OP
133 posts
 
The more that I think about it, and given a great deal of input from audio aficianados here, and elsewhere, my speakers would almost certainly be driven better by 60wpc than 30. Which means the M60 MKII.3 are clearly my best option. And, having given this a tremendous amount of thought, that is what I want, heat be damned.

The issue now, is that I've seen these on Audiogon no more than a couple times in the past few years. They were only made from October 2003, until December 2005. And I really just don't like the look of the newer, wide chassis.

Sadly, this makes it almost certain that I will have to make a secondary choice of amplifiers to purchase. And I really, really, want an Atma-sphere. Based on that, I can hold out for, say, six months, but after that, well, I will have to make a hard choice and actually buy something.
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