[Canada Rob]

Today I hooked an old Onkyo A-7040 50 w/ch class A/B integrated up to a pair of well broken in Super 3Ts and the sound was HUGE with excellent imaging and sense of space.  What really got me was the DEEP, tight, tuneful, and well controlled bass.  The top end detail and speed were ear popping.  Better than a SET?  No.  Just different, and a lot of fun.

I played Bela Fleck and the Flecktones; "Flight of the Cosmic Hippo" (oh, the bass!), and Sniff and The Tears; "No More Poison Penmail".  These two tunes are great for testing certain aspects of a system.

I think there's a gold mine out there in the way of vintage solid state that would go well with Omegas.  The A-7040 would go for about $100 on eBay etc.  Put it with a pair of Super 3i or 7 Monitors, plug your iPod etc straight in and you'll have a system that will outperform any (even expensive) iPod boom box, not to mention a lot of modern HiFi gear out there.

Onkyo A-7040

     

[Folsom]

This guy services then sells, in my home town. There are some gorgeous units at a record store here, from this guy.

http://www.tech1electronics.com/

[roscoe65]

Rob, your posts keep me changing and rethinking my listening layouts all the time.  I had been thinking about selling a vintage rig that is current mostly ornamental in my rack (Kenwood KA-7100 (60 wpc), KT-7500, KD-550) mostly because I don't have room physically or sonically for the big Yamaha NS-690's to work properly at sane levels.

Would leaving two sets of cables permanently connected to single set of Omega's be a problem?  I suppose I could relatively easily swap them out but as I get older I try to acknowledge my profound laziness.  Would a powered off amp connected to speakers present a funky load?

[Canada Rob]

Would leaving two sets of cables permanently connected to single set of Omega's be a problem?  I suppose I could relatively easily swap them out but as I get older I try to acknowledge my profound laziness.  Would a powered off amp connected to speakers present a funky load?

Both amps would be damaged in a scenario like that.  You can only have one amp hooked up at a time to your speakers.  The power from the amp that's playing would go directly into the amp that's "off" and surely damage it.  The amp that's playing could see a (among other things) some very strange impedance curves causing it likely to fail also.

[Canada Rob]

If you're into trying vintage amps with Omegas, three of the best I know of are the Sansui AU-717 or AU-515, and the Yamaha A-1.  These are some of the best integrated amps these companies ever produced.  I've not tried them with Omegas, but if the Onkyo worked, I'd be very surprised if these didn't work.  I used to sell Sansui and I've owned an A-1.  Utterly sublime amps.

[DaveC113]

I have tried a bunch of amps with the RS5 drivers and they all work well, with my EL34 SET having the magic midrange and the Crown XLS 1500 (with 50 Hz highpass xo on) making for amazing bass and MUCH higher SPL abilities.

I like your idea Roscoe but Rob is right... I'd love to be able to switch from SET to Crown with the flick of a switch depending on the source material! While it would be possible to build a switching box the cost in terms of both money and sound quality would not be worth it.