Sonus Faber Guarneri's

To add a few notes to Dovetail's and second some suggestions.
{Ref to recent pair with a "factory tweaked" esotar tweet (haven't quite grasped exactly what they did to it)}.

Very musical is the motto, one of the best sounds I have experienced. It's also commendably fast (i.e. timing is top-notch).
Power: that's a difficult one. We first tried these speakers with a number of medium-sized amps, and got stumped (the esotar sounded too loud, or the instruments were lacking in volume, the voices were clear but "angelic" i.e. disembodied...).
To give an indication, we started driving them well and getting beautiful music at Passion stereo / Symphonic Line Kraft /CAT JL (whatever) stereo levels. Another amp we tried was the KR Antares tube (good driving capabilities) -- but, no cigar. Unfortunately, these were the available amps (i.e. no big bat, cary, arc... etc).
The cables used were bearlabs -- consistent in earmarking differences between the amps. We also had Nordost spm's (IC & speaker) on hand, but they seemed to invariably excacerbate the tweet frequencies at the expense of the rest of the spectrum, so we gave up on them.
We listened to classical, leider (mono & stereo) and symphonic music.

Placement: as above, with listening position about 3ft away from the back wall and toe in focusing behind the listening position.

If there's anything youneed & I know, don't hesitate.

Hi Mark, the newer version is supposed to present a more "benign" load and sound vs. the older version that was a wilder beast more difficult to "tame".
It also seems that many SF resellers were having trouble selling the G's... Allegedly NOT because the asking price was high for the speakers but, rather, because the price for appropriate electronics went through the roof.
This is hearsay, I haven't actually gauged the differences myself: in a well treated room (dealer's) and driven by the same 250W class A machine, I hate to admit that old & new version G's sounded nearly identical to my ears... whatever.

A note about the sub: our experiments above were conducted WITHOUT the sub (SF's big one). We wanted to solve the driving issue disregarding, as far as we could, the low frequency roll-off (it was -2db @ 45Hz in the room).
In this respect, and as Mr Hiraga's machine is being modded with these speakers in mind (heavy duty caps will move into the PS, I suppose!), there shouldn't be a problem. But you do need a minimum amount of power to get correct sound from the G's, however low the volume. I would assume that the nominal rating required for a good tube could easily be half that of the equivalent ss... Cheers