I just ordered a pair of Zu Omen Def's

Do you still own them ?

You have endless amp options and yes, older Pass amps are fantastic with Zu. I believe the First Watt F3 would be a good choice. A more expensive choice, but one that is great is a XA 30.5 or the new J2.

As for tubes, there are many choices that will give you great bass. There is a Mystere amp for sale right now that would work very well with your speakers. Another great choice would be a Decware Torii or a Melody amp.

Good luck on your choices.

I'm getting the amp bug now. The Omen Defs have been sounding outstanding with my pioneer elite receiver. From what I've been reading, a much higher quality amp will bring lots more depth into the soundstage. The Pass Labs amps seem to be a good SS fit (I'm so afraid of losing any bass by going with tubes).

Would older, used Pass amps provide a good fit?

I have owned the Omen Defs and paired them with Decware and it is a great combination. I auditioned many more expensive amps in my system and the Decware Torii and Mini Torii were two of my favorites with the Omen Defs. The other two were the Pass XA 30.5 and the Art Audio PX-25. The Zu's paired with the Mini Torii were so correct tone and timbre wise. The XA 30.5 brought amazing speed and clarity and powerful bass and the Torii was a middle ground for the two. The Torii brings a lot more bass than the Mini Torii but loses a little (not much) on the Set magical midrange. However the Torii is massively revealing of any weaknesses in your system or in your room acoustics. The Mini Torii and the new SE34.3 are much more forgiving.

BtW, if you like to modify, then you absolutely should upgrade the caps in the Omen Defs to Mundorf SIO.

Looking down the road, there seems to be a lot of nice SS and Tube amps that will mate well. I will have to do much research for the right amp/pre combination. One thing that is important to me for a pre is a remote control.
I may go used. As far as tubes are concerned, the Decware's look really nice

Haven't heard those speakers, but I will tell you the guys at Zu are really good to deal with.

Anyone able to summarize the main sonic differences between the Zu Omen Def and the Tekton Lore---Pros, cons of each. I've never purchased speakers without listening first....Treble response/detail (dome tweeter vs. horn type), bass response, front firing vs. bottom design, etc.

I am a tweaker all the time. I currently have Polk stand Mounts and I got them dialed in pretty decent. It took a while, plus we added new furniture, rugs, drapes etc that required new tweaking. The only issue I'm going to have (this is a wife issue) is our room arrangement. There is no sitting place in the ideal sweet spot (tip of -V- ). I have nice chair on left of tip and couch starts (kind of caddy corner) along right tip. I could not get the Polks really to my liking with imaging. Experimenting with toe-in, etc, they are alright. I'm hoping for better success with the Zu's. When we move to a new house at end of year, I will be able to set up a listening room to my liking. So I purchased really thinking ahead. I was told that if we were to stay at our current location (which we are not), the ohm 's do a nice job with odd listening areas

Aberyclark,

You will not be disappointed -- the Omen Defs are a terrific speaker. I have had a couple of pairs now for about 4 months (one upgraded pair and one regular pair) and they are giant killers in my opinion. A few things I have learned that might help if you have not had Zu speakers before. First, they take a while to break in -- about 300 hours or so is what it seemed to get the bass to really start coming together for me. Also, they take some tweaking to get the bass right with the gap distance between the bottom of the speaker and the floor. Mine are on carpet, and I ended up using a piece of 12" x 12" .75" MDF under each speaker, and that seemed to really help tighten the bass (also a whole lot easier to 'slide' around during setup than dealing with the spikes). By raising and lowering the gap at the bottom you can really fine tune the bass. I think a lot of people conclude they do not have deep bass because they are somewhat finicky about this gap distance. When I finally got mine dialed in, they are pretty much flat down to about 30 Hz (my gap is about 1/4" to 3/8"). The bass is good enough that I do not find a subwoofer necessary, and I am kind of a bass freak.

The other thing I discovered is that they like to be farther apart with greater toe in than other speakers I have owned. My room is about 15' x 35' x 8', and I have them on the short wall, about 20" from the side wall and about 5' out from the rear, toed in where they would cross a few feet behind my head (I sit about 11' away). They are tone champs, and are capable of tremendous imaging. I found that changing the toe in even a 1/4" or so can make a large difference.

I am interested in hearing your thoughts once you get them set up. Just be prepared to do some tweaking to get the full potential out of them, but once you find the 'sweet spot,' they are something special.

Good choice, You will be very happy with the Defs!!

I'm sure that you'll love the Omens. I listened to them at a friends place and was really impressed. I almost ordered a pair.

Funny how we've had different experiences contacting Tekton. I placed a call to Tekron, left a message on their machine, and Eric returned my call within two hours on 4/18.

Results - I ordered the M-Lore in gloss Ferrari red!

I know that neither of us will regret our decisions.