Bake off
Speak to @sjs about his 300B power amp and see if there is enough room to fit an attenuator and source selection?
Or one of his legacy 2A3 amps with the same conversionâŠall the copperđ€©.
I seem to recall the Modwright stuff was quiet enough to work with 107dB horns.
If you are working with the current power amp and speakers, sounds like a transformer coupled valve pre with a big step down ratio could be worth a shot.
I have cobbled together something like that with an 6SN7, in the very unlikely event that I am your way with spare time it could be given a try.
Of course GT Audio make a big thing of being quiet enough to work on high efficiency speakersâŠ
that thomas mayer fella builds a lot of nice low power valve stuff, his 46 integrated or a pre power phono combo if you are feeling flush should work well with your speakers - I have the 10Y pre and EC8020 phono both of which have been problem free second hand purchases with no issues and sound rather nice, not found the right power amp but my speakers are much more demanding that yours
I have heard some Tron gear with Trios and it was indeed quiet. Didnât get the chance to play anything other than 60s jazz on it though so canât say whether it would meet my âmost genres inc EDMâ criteria.
I have one of Edâs dcb1s I can bring to lopwell or post. Itâs just gathering dust for you to try if you want. Itâs not high end but may well help the route you eventually take ??
In true AA fashion I will recommend my current valve integrated secure in the knowledge that you donât want it and are not in the least bit interested in it.
That said, there are plenty of dealers near you and it should be easy to get one on home demo unlike many of the suggestions so far. It might surprise you. I donât know how quiet it will be on the end of your AGs but it is totally silent on my MG15s.
I have always liked Luxmanâs LECUA volume control which gets right out of the way being electronic rather than a pot and this is the only valve amp with such a system and I think it makes for an incredibly lucid presentation.
Well worth a spin in my view.
I love the Preda. Doesnât necessarily solve the power amp and overall gain issue by itself.
Buy a used one of these. 6db or 12db gain.
Itâs what I currently use.
Iâm thinking about getting a 45 power amp from him, website says itâs around ÂŁ6,200 inc VAT but Iâm going to see if heâll haggle and I can collect to avoid the VAT.
There is another guy who builds amps using Thomasâ designs and does them really well, his name is Oliver Sayes but is in the US
107 dB /W @ 1m, means about 117 dB @ 1m for 10W, so a full on rock concert / disco at 3m from a 10W amp, so a 3.5W 2A3/6B4G is probably acceptable unless head banging is a regular occurrence.
Given the games which can be played with the active bass, and the description given by @crimsondonkey I would say a SET with fixed bias could do the job.
Silent SETs are straightforward enough, just needs v quiet power supplies, good layout and a good filament supply, either the Mayer double choke approach, the TentLab modules, or the Rod Coleman regs can all achieve silence on high efficiency speakers.
an amp like 5842 - 45/46/2A3/6B4G/PX4 would also be low sensitivity, of about 1V to full output, which will help to match with active preamps
TM likes a DHT pre with a step down otx driving an AVC, any noise from the DHT is nicely attenuated and doesnât raise a problem. His approach to system gain is arranged around having high efficiency speakers, but there are a number of others which can be successful, such as the Pass F4 with an active pre SS or valve preamp, for example.
Well get on with making an Arcadia Model 45 then you lazy bugger, that would go perfectly with LV Air Scouts, Tone Scouts and Avantgarde Duos
Maybe this would be fixed with a different potentiometer? Could be really easy and cheap to fix, talk to the manufacturer.
It doesnât use a potentiometer but uses photo cells. Changing this means you might as well get a different pre.
Plenty of scope for tube faffâŠ