[pgastone]

Hi,

I own Zu Cable Druids which should be ideal to try out some SET's.
I have a wide range of musical tastes ranging from classical, symphonic and intimate string quartets, opera, jazz, rock....
Currently the Druids are hooked up to a Cayin 50T- the combination works pretty well- more intimate music is nicely involving in triode mode and more dynamic material is covered by switching to ultralinear.  System has it's defects- imaging/soundstage could be more focused as well as wider and deeper and the Cayin occasionally can sound very slightly grainy in the treble.  Overall though it's pretty satsfying.

Now, I would like to experience the "SET magic"- midrange warmth and palpability, more subtle layering, wide soundtage etc.  However, I do have some concerns- I do not want to go so far that it will sound overly warm and syrupy, lose all sense of bass rythm and pace, and forfeit dynamics atlogether. In fact, this kind of brings me back to what I was mentioning above about the Cayin in triode and ultralinear- I often find that in triode, when the music gets to dynamic and lively (think Grieg...), I have to switch to ultralinear to recapture some of these qualities.

Apparently, there are SET's that pull it off- I am looking for an integrated and have budgeted about $1500 (though I could go a liittle higher if necessary).  The consensus from a lot of the feedback I have received is that in my price range I should probably shy away from 300b's and KT88's as they often tend towards the overly warm and lush, albeit beautiful, at the expense of PRAT.  Instead, I am told i should be looking at 2A3's and 845's which deigns, within my budget constraints, are better at finding the right compromise.

Well, I have come across a used Bel Canto SETi40 and from the reviews I read it sounds pretty spectacular, not mentioned that it has a remote, balance etc....do any of you have any experience with it?  I could really use some of your expertise/guidance.

Others I have looked at are the Almarro 318B and Dared 845 (I won't lie, I am embodiement of couch potatoe so if I could get away with the convenience of a remote I would.... )   

[AdamM]

Give this thread a quick skim:
http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=45016.0

Your Zu Druids have a pretty interesting impedance curve.  It may do some significant things to the response with a SET amp...



Might be magic!  Might be less than...   My KT88 SETs were a bit less than magic with my bookshelf speakers, but is fully grand with other speakers.

I'd make sure you listen to any candidates before purchase.  You can't arrange marriages between SETs and speakers, it's best to see if they actually like each other first

/A

[TONEPUB]

Sell you a great pair of Bottlehead 2A3's cheap and I used them with the Druids we had in
for review with great results!

PM me if interested.

A design with the 845 will probably be out of your budget and the 300B's can be all
over the board.  Depends on the design and the tube used.  I had a Wavac that
had tons of PRAT...

Adam is completely correct on the marriage thing, you never know what you will get!

That's why I ended up dumping my Tube SET amps (except for these cute little bottleheads)
and got a Pass Labs F3.  95% of the SET goodness, but much more bass control and not
as affected by different speakers.  It too is a killer matchup for the druids.

Big soundstage, really airy, tons of dynamics AND bass control.  The F3 is a single
gain stage solid state, class-A, single ended amplifier.  I used it with Klipschorns,
the Druids, my Rethm 2nd rethms and a few others with fantastic results...

That one's for sale too, as I just don't have the room for three systems anymore.

[Scott F.]

Hi pgastone,

After looking at the impedance curve of the Zu's, it doesn't look all that bad. One thing for sure is I've seen much worse. When I try to match speakers to SET's, this is me personally, I try not to go over about 40ohms at the impedance hump. That is really tough to do sometimes.

That said, the 50ohms of the Zu should work fine with an SET providing..... the SET you choose NEEDS to have QUALITY output transformers. I'm afraid that ones like the standard Hammond's may not be beefy enough to handle big bass duty without getting a little flabby sounding.

Keep in mind, a KT88, 6550, 6L6, EL34 or any other similar tube are actually a Beam Power tube or Pentode, not a triode. Now, those tubes can be wired in triode mode but there is a difference in sound between a Pentode wired in triode mode and a true Directly Heated Triode. If you want to experience all of the SET magic, you really need to stick with a DHT (300b, 211, 2A3, 45, 50, 10, etc (the 845 is actually modulator but people do consider it in the triode family)).

I guess the first thing you need to do is give us an idea of your listening habits (volume levels). I'd hate to steer you towards something with (say) 20+ watts when you can get by 1.5 to 8 watts. Also, it would be good to know a bit about your room size and how far away you are from your speakers. Lastly, since you started your listening habits off with classical and then made reference to Grieg, I assume the largest portion of your listening is to Classical? Maybe if you could give us a rough percentage breakdown.

Don't let any of this scare you off. As the other guys have mentioned, amp and speaker matching in SET's are critical to get the optimum sound from your system. Once you find a good amp, then you can fine tune your system by tube rolling.

[JP78]

pgastone,

i owned the bel canto seti40 for 5 years paired with the gallo reference two (large spheres NOT at all like the new reference 3), and loved every minute of it.  the amp is absolutely beautiful in its performance, and with the lights off a pleasure to have in the listening room with its warm glow.  i found i preferred the full bass it gave me with the gallos in my room to the extremely tight bass (overdamped?) of digital amps such as the spectron musician.  the noise floor excellent, the unit is absolutely zero maintenance, and playing with the 12ax7 tubes really allows some flexibility in flavoring the preamplifier to balance out your system.  every time i played "crash" by dave matthews the chimes would send chills up my spine.  the treble is clean, crisp and extended (i believe the gallo speakers excel in treble clarity and are very revealing), and that set magic shows up in spades on all the big notes of female vocals).

i have decided to substantially upgrade my system, and the speakers i hope to have in a couple months are the mbl 101 series which require absurd amounts of power.  still, i did ask the mbl distributor if the bel canto set 80 monoblocks would do the trick, and he told me i *might* have a shot if i biamp with 4 of the seti80 monoblocks.  i briefly daydreamed about it, before the reality of the costs and my better half flogging me out of the house set in . 

if you have any questions at all, please feel free to ask me.  i am absolutely enthralled with this amplifier, and  believe it to be bel canto's best product ever made.  in the future if i have a second system, i hope to have the gallos and seti40 setup again.

if you've never listened to set in your system, this is a wonderful place to start.  the amplifier is built like a tank, requires no biasing or upkeep, has an extremely long tube life, and comes with all the luxuries solid state amps offer (remote, led display, etc). 

best,

[vman71]

For your consideration, I have a John Hogan 6sn7/27/2a3 & 45 S.E.T. integrated amp for sale.  These amps rarely come up for sale and have somewhat of a cult following on various audio forums like Audio Asylum.  If you do a search on Audio Asylum, you'll find a lot of information.  John Hogan amps aren't much to look at but the sound is just beautiful S.E.T. magic.

I have high resolution pictures for those that are interested.  Some specifics of this unit:

All point-to-point wiring
Vintage Sansui OPTs (similar to those used on Jeff Korneff amps)
Hammond chassis and power transformer
Dual volume pots
Dual hum pots
Auto/Self-biasing
High quality parts like Blackgate, Dale, and internal silver wiring

I'd probably let it go for $1300 or $1100 with no tubes.  I also updated some of the tubes to some better vintage stuff.  A killer deal with the tubes, as the vintage 2a3's are worth $100 by themselves.

6sn7GT/VT-231 pair (GE) input tubes (these are early 40?s tubes)
27 pair (RCA) driver tubes
2a3 vintage CBS Hytrons output tubes (can also use 45 output tubes with no problems)
6106 Bendix rectifier tube (expensive upgrade tube for the 5Y3WGTA)

At my listed price, I will offer to AC members FREE shipping to the lover 48.

Mike