Amplifier for Klipsch Cornwalls


I will be bying some Klipsch Cornwalls soon and will need an amplifier to drive them. Hoping to find something under $500. I have a Thor tube pre-amp and a Forte solid state pre-amp.
These will be in a second system primarily for home theater. But I will use them for music as well. I do like it loud sometimes.
holzhauer
What are some of the favorites you guys are using either integrated or separates? 
I have Klipsch Forte II used for Classic Rock. I used them for some time with a Odyssey Stratos and a tube preamp.
The sound was very good. I then bought a Baldwin Tube Amp here on Audiogon from Audiospec. The sound is much better, to my ears. Yes, even the bass is stronger ! My room is 14x30 and the 28 watts is more than enough to fill the room, and then some. So I think either will work, however a nice 30 watt tube amp is a lot nicer, in my opinion.
I ran Klipsch Forte II's with both SS amp and tubed amp. The SS amp was 200WPC and the Tubed amp was 90WPC. These speakers were so efficient, I think they could be driven by a 3 watt amp. Anyway, I never had any problems driving these speakers with either amp. The Forte II's are on the bright side, so I preferred the sound through the tubed amp.
I was simply stating my experience with Klipsch. I've owned K horns, La Scalas and heresy's, and in my opinion they all sounded much better with a ss amp and tube pre.
Those 15 inch woofers can sound slow and mushy with tubes.

The size of the woofers has nothing to do with the speed of the amp; this is a common amplifier myth. It turns out that if the woofers are over-damped, that that can slow them down, IOW if you have excessive damping factor the woofers can be slowed down, and the result is decreased output as I mentioned above.

Here is a reference article about this issue:
"Critical Damping: Missing Link in Speaker Operation Parts 1 & 2
http://www.pearl-hifi.com/06_Lit_Archive/07_Misc_Downloads/Misc_Downloads.html
Go with SS. Those 15 inch woofers can sound slow and mushy with tubes. A tube pre amp is what you want in my opinion...
a good place to start is a H H Scott, EL 84 based intergrated amp. A nice 222B, or 299B will do a great job with Cornwalls, and shouldn't cost over $500.
Most high efficiency loudspeakers get their efficiency from tight gaps and precise construction. As a result they are highly reactive and are over-damped with anything more than a very moderate output impedance from the amp.

IOW, a tube amplifier will sound better; will play deeper bass and be smoother and more detailed overall than most transistor amplifiers. This is because a tube amp, especially one with no loop feedback, will not react poorly to the back EMF from the speaker, and will not present such a low impedance to the speaker that it is over-damped (if the speaker is over-damped you can loose as much as 8db of bass in the bottom octave).

I recommend some sort of lower-powered Push-Pull triode amplifier, maybe something with no more than 50 watts. You'll find the speakers doing things you had no idea they could!