I bought my monos used with a plan to drive a pair of Maggies (probably 3.6's), but they just sat in their boxes at the top of the stairs. I never even turned them on to see if they'd work! The idea of going to Maggies fell thru when I realized they wouldn't work with the room size and layout. The tube amp I was using started to give me some problems. Nothing horrible, but a pain in the butt to fix. I called Klaus about them, and we had a lengthy discussion. I went ahead and had him rebuild them to the "SE" mode, and had them in the system about four days later. After about a week and a half, the sound was simply grand. Compared to my older (but still quite nice) Accuphase, I knew they were a winner. After three weeks they were even better. I used them for about a year when I had them upgraded again to what Klaus called his "glass ceiling mode". The amps had a different sound yet, and out of the box we thought they were better. Thru the years I'd had four or five preamps in front of them, and with the exception of one, all sounded great.
Thru the years I had the opportunity to listen to a lot of amps, and honestly few impressed me honestly. Some were highly thought of on the internet boards, and a couple just plain stunk. I'm still the number one fan of the Conrad Johnson 140's, and have told Klaus that if I ever goto another brand it would be these. But I also could buy several pairs of Stratos Monos for the price of a pair!
gary