Single-ended triode stereo amplifiers: SET-Amp Owners/Opinions?*

She must of had big arms.

jeff

 

About a year I went right off the deep end: Korneff 45, EML tubes, Omega SAM's.

Now everything else sounds opaque and artificial. Don't think I can go back if I tried, it'd be liking leaving Oz for Kansas.

KP

 

I give her my heart but she wanted my amps

 

Some of the nicest amps I’ve ever heard were SET amps, but I just can’t live with horn speakers so I thought they weren’t for me until
I heard the Kondo ongaku and the Air Tight ATM 211 and the Cary 805B with Quad Electrostatics.

 

Coincident Dynamo SE34 with 300B's here, powering Zu Omen DW II's. Great with acoustic music: Jazz and small-scale Classical, unsuitable for more dynamic music, IMHO. I'm happy with the pairing, as I do have other systems for the more dynamic music.

 

I have a Cary CAD-300sei that I am using in a second system with a pair of Coincident Partial Eclipse II.
Like @Benzion above, I use it only for listening to small scale classical and jazz since its sound is totally unsuitable for any other kind of music.

 

I have two different Audio Note SETs paired with Audio Note speakers, which sound as good as you would guess. I also have a audiomat solfege (40 watts with 4 x 6550s) powering KEF Reference 1s. Turns out to be a wonderful combination.

 

I have a very inexpensive SE el34 9 watt amp in my den. I love that little amp. Took it to a buddies and it paired amazing with some Spatial Audio Turbo S open baffle speakers. I was shocked how good it worked with those.

I just have it with a Pioneer pl530, yaqin ms12b pre into two cheap kef Q-100. Sounds really nice in there.

 

My very inexpensive Pacific Creek 300b integrated amp does great with my Bottlehead speakers from years ago. The Hoffman - Gray mastered Stadium Arcadium played loud sounds awesome. Tight, deep bass and dynamics are impressive to me. Of course, they play less demanding material with ease, also.

 

My one foray into SET was a pair of Cary 300B monoblocks I really never liked the amps a bit to slow and soft perhaps I was using the wrong speakers but on paper at least Alon Lotus Elite Sigs should have been a good match. Also I had a pair of WE repro tubes in them and one of them blew in less than a year I was furious. I sold the amps and sold the single WE in retrospect seeing the prices even the repros fetch now I should have kept it.

 

I have been down the SET road and tried a lot over the years.
A friend owns a Kondo Ongaku and I think that is the most special sounding audio component I have heard.
I have owned an Almaroo 318B which can be made to sound very good by lowering the amount of negative feedback.It has a bit too much in its factory setting but if you remove it completely it gets a bit soft and soggy.
Elekit used to sell a 300B SET kit amplifier which is really good.Not your normal bloomy /soggy 300B SET.
One of the best I have owned was a little Sonic Art Legend using ECL86 in single ended [yes not a triode].Only 2.5 watts but it sounded beautifully open and pure.
I have also heard a lot of terrible SETs-loose,bloated,boomy,slow,etc.

Nowadays I use a Bakoon amplifier which sounds quite like a really good SET.Not exactly the same because they also have their own sound but they have much of the essence of the SET sound and behave electrically more like a SET.Which makes me suspect a lot of the appeal of SETs relates more to them being current drive[or quasi current drive] and having high output impedance and lowish damping factors rather than the fact they use valves and output
transformers.
I also use a 300b preamp [A Supratek Cabernet 300B] which provides the good stuff of a 300B SET power amp without the speaker matching issues [as long as the power amp used lets that sound through and some don't].

 

Well I'm in the club. And no lack of dynamic jump or slam here.