Best value amplifier under or near $6K

I missed the 'or similar' speaker bit....

yes... choose a speaker... the amp pick will be far easier that way.

'course, if you got to do an amp first, and it's not going to be a tube amp, get one with 200 - 300 wpc output and that will drive a wealth of speakers. BUT the best way is to match the amp with your speakers first... allowing the speakers needs to indicate which amp, in output and topology.

depending on the room size and listening levels you have a lot of choices in that range.

FWIW.. in a medium size room, 100wpc or so +/- ought to work pretty good on Sophias... and I'd opt for tubes.

Gary Dodd is making some 150wpc mono blocks or was... auto biasing too, even with a cap upgrade you should come out under your budget.

Or you can look into getting a pr of his 120wpc self bias monos with cap upgrade like I have, and be under $3K for the pr. Retubing is cheap too at <$300 for both amps using some NOS tubes and great sounding new issues of EL34!

They are outstanding amps. Just outstanding... and probably why they don't often come up for sale... and go quick when they do usually.

otherwise, in SS-land, if you could find a late model BAT VK500 w/BAT PK. in fine shape... there's a really nice amp. Twin monos... one chassis. heavy and runs hot but a real power house work horse pr of amps with a bent towrads a tube ish sound.

Owned both... loved both. Still got my Dodds.

lastly, each time I saw Sophias... they had big ayre monos running them. Not bad really with that setup, but with a tube preamp they'd sound better I'm sure. I feel Wilson's in general need tubes in there somewhere... but that's just me.

Good luck.