Funny,
But I have owned/own or used almost all that stuff.
I had the Vtl St 85, good tube amp, great bass, I replaced it with a Quicksilver amp to move up to higher power and refinement. The high end had a slight solid state sound to it, it is a different circuit in the front end than most VTL amps, but on the whole very good and very well built. I changed caps, but it didn't really help much in my case. I used Seimens and Winged c power tubes, both very good with the edge going to Seimens for their transparency. Experiment with the input tubes, I used some NOS Mullards, but am currently playing with a 6201 from Upscale Audio that I like a lot, and might have been a great addition to that amp.
Dynaco 120, I am borrowing a very old modded version from Frank van Alstine, Mine was modded in the 70's and was one of his first mod efforts with that amp. I like it alot. My amp is very dynamic and punchy and has a delicious tube like sound I love. It lacks a little transparency, but it makes up for it with musicality, and it has that in spades, this little amp can sing. I spoke to Frank about his latest version which is supposed to be many times better and fixes whatever problems the earlier version had.
Mapletree Ultra 4 SE: This is my reference preamp, and Dr Lloyd is a genius, you made the right choice there. Extremely musical preamp, I could go on and on but I won't, be happy you made a great choice.
Try NOS tubes, they will TRANSFORM that pre. I used Sylvania 6SN7 GTA's from the 50's that were great , but now I use Brimars that are just about two levels better than the Sylvania's but are very hard to get, I use a Tungsol rectifier tube.
Fortunately the Mapletree loved the VTL and the Dynaco. If I had to make a choice I would choose a Van Alstine Dynaco 120 with the Mapletree, great synergy, low cost and amazing sound, and you could leave it on all the time.
Gr Research speakers: I have the AV2's , that I use in my son's room, not a bad speaker, but in my son's room they just don't work that well. I brought these to a rave, and they never sounded so good in a big room like at the rave, they just don't work well in my son's smallish square room. But they sounded great at another person's home. I switched to Vandersteen 1c's for my son and they work much better in his room.
Hope this helps, honestly check out the Van Alstine stuff, it is pretty amazing for the money and the synergy with your Mapletree will be great, the Mapletree just gives a very solid sweet tube sound to everything it touches, it also works exceedingly well with digital amps, I have used my pre with Channel Island d200's and Nuforce 9's with tremendous results!!
Mike
