Quote Originally Posted by Panomaniac View Post
Are you set on Solid State, or would tube gear be acceptable? Sounds like you want to stay as trouble free as possible, so tubes may not be the way to go. But a nice EL34 push-pull would sound very nice and have all the power you need.
I may consider tube gear -- I've owned some before and liked it. I can't say I prefer tubes however, I like "good" solid state too. I've owned a Dynaco PAS 3X and Stereo 70--that's the extent of my experience with tubes. Not state of the art, but that little combo sounded great and had plenty of punch to drive my Altecs. I used them to drive the Model 9's I owned at the time---3 way Altecs--same woofer as Model 15's, with a cone midrange and a tweeter. They actually were nice sounding Altecs--but everything sounded good on them--they weren't very revealing. Everything sounded good on them, but nothing sounded "amazing" if you know what I mean so they probably weren't the best speakers to make a critical evaluation of the tube Dynacos or to compare them to solid state...... I'm leaning toward solid state, but replacing tubes every several years is not a big deal for me--I've done it before and I do know how to plug in a tube!