Valve Ingetrated Amps - What's out there in 2023

I have a client with an urge for a Leben integrated - Is there anything else out there to top it?

Just reading about this that may be interesting but 14W may not quite fit the bill

Any insight on this @murrayjohnson ?

I had a 600 which sounded great with the Impulse Ta’us I had at the time but not so much with anything else! Your clients hankering should be tempered with matching speakers I would suggest.

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No idea but looks lovely

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Agreed. He has Lowthers (No problem) and Tannoys (Big problem)

Tell him to buy my Luxman 58a :smile:

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Or stuff like the Audion, the Stirling with EL34, KT88s or KT120s from memory


Audion Sterling Plus by Robert Seymour, on Flickr

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Is that BP 300b in the classifieds still available? Suit him that would.

Ongaku

(is the answer to most questions)

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Probably a bit too grunty but the Copland CTA407 I had here recently was a splendid thing and played nice with a pair of Fyne Audios which are Tannoyesque.

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Is the AN Oto still a thing?

I believe so but I don’t think it would be great with Tannoys

Haha, Tannoys didn’t get mentioned until post #4
I don’t think I read past the 1st post :grinning:

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Or

Nick (myrman) had one of these for a fair while it always sounded very good.

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Tannoys…

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It did indeed but you were limited to EL34s as I remember. If I was looking for something like that again I would probably go for a Prima Luna with multiple valve options.

I tried a Leben CS300 with my Lockwoods and it sounded lovely on most of what I listen to but on some more complex pieces it couldn’t really cope and so it had to go.

I traded it for a Luxman LX-380 as mentioned above by Rob. The Luxman has enough power to control the MG15s and sounds sublime. Lovely combination and an end game amp for me.

From what I’ve read, big Tannoys prefer push pull and most single ended amps tend to struggle.

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I would like to try one of those at some point with my Revel F208s.

Edit. I meant the 405, not the 407. :face_with_hand_over_mouth:

Puresound 2a3 perhaps

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I have a sample on order which should ship any day now.

Good to see I had some influence on the labelling of the back panel although he hasn’t adopted my suggestion (Left) of removing all the text bottom centre of the front panel!

Would’ve preferred a valve phono but he does have a habit of making decent ss phono stages.
Will have to persevere with my own efforts to make an all valve EL84 integrated.

A30-R would also run both Lowthers & Tannoys but no inbuilt phono stage.

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Lowthers sound like a flatulent frog trapped in a plywood wardrobe, so godnose, tho’ I always think they need more power than the usual audiophool cliches dictate.

Tannoys, not much better, except you can’t have too much power - so Octave V80SE - 120WPC, fearsomely complex, and beautifully over-engineered:

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