solid state amp for merlin tsm's ?

Ditto on the Totems being bright to my ears. Though it's always important to remember that this is a VERY subjective issue. All speakers have specific colorations. The trick is to discover the speaker that sounds "right" to your ears.

PS: I recently heard the GMA Eos HD....a fine speaker, but I was even more thrilled with my TSM's when I returned home.

Hi, Samski....
I own the current TSM-MXr speakers. I run them with....yup, Tubes via the Manley Stingray. But I've also had them powered by an Odyssey SS amp, Emotiva XPA-2 and a few others. I've also had the Totem The One speakers, which are certainly a very good small monitor. I'm also familiar with much of the Totem line. Some of my other system speakers have been Magnepan 1.6 and I just recently had the Revel M20's to play with.
I think that ALL of these speakers sound their best with tubes, at least when it comes to the mid and high frequencies. In fact I've become a huge tube convert even finding the a mid-fi pair of Def tech speakers sound amazing when connected to the Stingray amp.
With that said I know 1st hand that the new version of the TSM's are not anymore handicapped by SS gear than the Totems or Revels. In my experience they ALL benefit from tubes. I also found the Merlins in another higher class than all of my previous speakers, even besting my Magnepans for imaging. And it didn't matter if it was SS or tubes. It's true that not being able to hear the speakers is a worry. All I can say is that the feedback on the Merlins is as high as it is for a reason.

Best of luck with your system,

Rob

Well said, Pubul. Naturally there's some bias for my Merlins, but I have a lot of love for other speakers as well. For a short while I had the Merlins powered by an Emotiva XPA-2 and the UMC-1 processor. You can't get more mismatched than that, at least according to Merlin. But I wanted to hear exactly how "crippled" the TSMs would be by such a combo. I'm not going to say anything crazy!. The TSM's lost some of their ghostly imaging and midrange finesse, but I seriously doubt anyone would have been less than thrilled with the sound. I have a friend who ran an older set of TSMs with a Creek SS amp and the sound was great.

Rob