once you draw a line in the sand regarding whether or not you want to keep your amplifiers, the decision is going to get alot easier. thiels reveal alot of detail and throw an excellent soundstage, and are better (more accurate) speakers than vandy-2's. too bad they need extra power. if you could only drive the woofers with a separate ss amp (could even be a monoblock), the tube amps would only have to deal with the mids. when you don't have alot of money to throw around, you can still consider alternative solutions.
Give up on Thiel 3.6 or try another amp again ?
These speakers sound amazing sometimes, especially on small-scale, well recorded material (regardless of genre).
I tried a PS Audio HCA-2 and an Aragon 8002, neither of which sounded particularly good. I'm now driving them with a pair of 90 wpc Quicksilver mono tube amps. I know this is against conventional wisdom, but I like them more than the previous amps as long as I keep the volume moderate.
The problem is that the speakers don't open up and bloom as I turn them up for either large-scale classical or rock music, but rather get hard sounding. It could be the small room overloading, but I suspect it's the amps running out of steam.
Ideally, I would have an unlimited budget to power these speakers with a huge, clean solid state amp. Sadly, I have pretty much no budget at all, so I'd have to sell the Quicksilvers to finance a new amp. This would leave me with $1200 or so for a good, high current, high wattage amp.
I was thinking a used Parasound A21 might fit the bill, but there aren't a whole lot of other options in this price range that seem optimum.
Truthfully, I am starting to think it would more make sense to explore other used speaker options; as nice as the Thiels sound at times, they may simply be too impractical given my financial constraints. Perhaps a pair of Vandersteen 3A signatures or a new pair of 2ce Signature Mk. II? Perhaps the Gallo 3.1s?
What would you do if you were me?
btw, the rest of the system consists of a Quicksilver linestage and a Rega Saturn CD player. Thanks!
I tried a PS Audio HCA-2 and an Aragon 8002, neither of which sounded particularly good. I'm now driving them with a pair of 90 wpc Quicksilver mono tube amps. I know this is against conventional wisdom, but I like them more than the previous amps as long as I keep the volume moderate.
The problem is that the speakers don't open up and bloom as I turn them up for either large-scale classical or rock music, but rather get hard sounding. It could be the small room overloading, but I suspect it's the amps running out of steam.
Ideally, I would have an unlimited budget to power these speakers with a huge, clean solid state amp. Sadly, I have pretty much no budget at all, so I'd have to sell the Quicksilvers to finance a new amp. This would leave me with $1200 or so for a good, high current, high wattage amp.
I was thinking a used Parasound A21 might fit the bill, but there aren't a whole lot of other options in this price range that seem optimum.
Truthfully, I am starting to think it would more make sense to explore other used speaker options; as nice as the Thiels sound at times, they may simply be too impractical given my financial constraints. Perhaps a pair of Vandersteen 3A signatures or a new pair of 2ce Signature Mk. II? Perhaps the Gallo 3.1s?
What would you do if you were me?
btw, the rest of the system consists of a Quicksilver linestage and a Rega Saturn CD player. Thanks!