Amp for Shahinian Diapasons


Recently upgraded to the Diapason with Double Eagle woofers. Anyone able to suggest a nice amp to match?

After something reasonably priced..my listening levels are not into the stratosphere :)

I was thinking Eastern Electic minimax pre and Belles power, Blue Circle Integrated, EE Minimax pre and Bedini power, AVI Lab integrated...

Any advice greatly appreciated...

Cheers

Richard
enjoy_the_music

Showing 5 responses by baranyi

Simon,
Thank you for your response but many factors can be at play in marring an otherwise worthy system. We have all seen this and it could have been at play during my audition of this system. I also like to think I know what music sounds like since I am married to a professional Musician.
Any reasonable amps for the Diapasons? I have told by 2 Diapason owners tat the Bedini amps are becoming unreliable with no support. Been looking for a Plinius? Any others that I should be looking for?
Dick,
Recommended to me a single SA-100 for the Diapasons. He also said he was astounded how well a SA-50 drove them as well. I was not overly impressed when I heard Spectrons on Analysis speakers. Bob
I had an interesting occurrence yesterday. I have a single CJ Evolution 2000 (used to have 3 when I had Apogee Scintillas) that I had planned on using with the Shahinians.
I spoke to both the seller of the speakers and Dick Shahinian regarding which speaker terminals to use with the speakers. There are 3 different places that one could hook up the speakers with and it is quite confusing. Anyway, both Shahinian and the seller told me you could use either of the main terminals. I selected one of the terminals and turned on the amp. It sounded horrible to say the least. There was no treble and the midrange was terrible. I was really afraid that the CJ was malfunctioning. Last night, on a lark I felt agitated that this huge amp couldn't be used for this speaker and I decided to see if anything would change by trying the other speaker terminal. Once I did this, I was stunned! There was treble and midrange and speaker came to life!

It is ncredible that I was going to get rid of a perfectly good amplifier because the speakers were not correctly connected to it! Tonyptony told me the that the Ultravalve by Van Alstine worked great for his Diapasons so I couldn't understand why my 114 pound Evolution 2000 couldn't work as well. Anyway, I am enjoying the sound without the additional expenditure of a new amp.
Tonyptony, Sorry about quoting the wrong model number of AVA. You did in fact say the the Ultra 550. I very much appreciate you telling me about this because it had me continually trying to figure out the problem with the CJ amp. When I looked underneath the Diapasons the first time I was completely perplexed. I really didn't understand what was going on and probably still don't. Do you by chance have an owner's manual for these speakers? I can tell you even at this early stage that they are excellent! They are very revealing of cabling in the other parts of your system. I changed the power cord of my preamp today and it made a huge difference.