Solid state -> valve amp advice

and frustrating.

Youā€™re welcome to pop over to Sheffield and have a listen to the A30 (to give you an idea of a 30W valve amp) and a low powered valve amp with sensitive speakers. You can get more impact from sensitive speakers in many ways than low efficiency with high powered amps in my opinion. Ā£1000 would need some patience to get what you want on the secondhand market but a 30W valve amp with 94db speakers is a great starting point.

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Iā€™m revisiting this to say that Iā€™ve decided to sell all of my gear. I think that starting from scratch is a better bet than forcing things to work.

Is what I have, listed above, something that people here would be interested in, or would I be better off looking at the general selling platforms (ebay, etc)?

Put some prices up and you might get a bite.

Forgive me, I didnā€™t see this thread the first time round, but, unless Iā€™m missing something, you list what you like about your current system, but donā€™t say what you donā€™t like about it and why you want to change to a valve amp!

Personally, I wouldnā€™t change your Arcam setup for a valve amplifier, especially not with a Ā£500 budget.

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I was going to say, selling all the Arcams would probably realise about Ā£300- 500, depending how the wind blows, if youā€™re thinking of adding that to your Ā£500 then you might be getting to an entry level valve integrated.

I am in a similar position, I have an 8R/8P set up, but just fancy something different, so am trying to save up for a nice valve integrated amp that would maybe be able to work as a Pre-amp when I can afford to upgrade to a valve pre-power arrangement.

Anyway, just be careful of throwing the baby out etc.

I would relate the price of entry to valve amplification to ss amplification the same as vinyl to CD.
Itā€™s far more expensive to achieve good SQ with valves than transistors. Add in reliability and faff factor thenā€¦

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If youā€™re pooling the money.