Electrostatic Speakers/SS amp - what tube preamp?

Marakantetz, good catch. Thanks for keeping everything straight. It should have read as 50K Ohms. Sorry for the typo.

Nothing wrong with 50K, I was just wondering about 50Ohms as Unsound stated...???

Marakanetz, Why to you feel a 500 ohm out put pre would present a load problem for a 50K ohm input? This is a 100 to 1 ratio. As i recall the minimum is 10 to 1. I would expect that the best thing a user could do would be to ask the manufacturer of the pre amp (if it is not specified in the user manual, as mine was).

Unsound, I'm realy curious about 50Ohms...
If that is the case or near arround even SF can be an issue of compatibility. I might be wrong if SF is transformer-coupled like AN...?

Just curious. Do the Blue Circles have a balanced option?

Gilbert Yeung at Blue Circle loves Martin Logans, and uses a pair of Odessey and a pair of CLS (amount some other brands) to tweek and test his designs.

His pair of CLS are pink (a custom job just for him by Martin Logan as a joke).

So put his tube preamps on your list. The matching amp to his BC21 and BC21.1 preamps is a solid state amp (BC22). Many also use his BC3 preamp with either a BC22 or a BC26.

I will third the SF recommendation.

I will second the SF choice.The SFL-2 is much better than the SFL-1{not sure where Sig.version comes in}.Possibly,the terra Song SS-1 or Marsh P2000.Are you using digital or analog.Digital always sounded better using this amp than did my 46K analog set-up.You will want something with a little sparkle up-top.

Considering your use of a balanced DC coupled solid state amp with an input impedance of about 50 Ohms(?), I think the the well built, user friendly, flexible, balanced, low out put impedance, DC coupled, neutral sounding, Sonic Frontiers Line series make ideal candidates.

On Audiogon: Rogue 99 magnum for $1500 or Cary 88 for $1200 would be your best choices. If you're looking at an AE-3, from experience, the DJH version is a big step up.

AE3 by Cary new/used still will be under your budget. Make sure that your poweramp input impedance is >=30k.