I had a pair of Fourier Panthere monoblocks with 8 6C33C Russian military triodes each that powered a pair of Essence Super Gem and later Wilson Sophia speakers through an autoformer. When things were right, the sound was glorious. Not the lean, hyper-detailed, flat-soundstage, micro-image sound you hear so often, but big, transparent, harmonically-rich sound that washed over you and left you mesmerized. The problem was: you never knew what you would get when you turned these beasts on and watched the lights in the house dim as the amps doubled as space heaters. Sometimes everything went right and on others bass authority seemed light and a check of the amps indicated one or more blown tube fuses. Sometimes in the middle of the music something seemed askew and I noticed one channel had popped its little red circuit breaker. After I took the amp apart and cleaned and tensioned the tube sockets, things seemed more stable, but finally I realized that I wanted to escape the world's problems by listening to music, not add to them with a problematic amp. Perhaps the newer OTL designs are more stable, such as Atma-Sphere, but with older designs listening often became a project. Perhaps this is why almost every manufacturer of these designs went out of business.
Thought on OTL tube amps
Just curious....how do these sound/perform compared to tube amps with transformers? Why do you prefer one or the other? Any particular brands of OTL amps you would recommend listening to? You can see my system on my tag here...listen mostly to rock and roll with a smattering of jazz and a bit of classical once in a while. The next stop on my amplifier adventure is an OTL model, and I have no intention of trading it for either SET I currently have, as I'm very happy with both. One of the ways I enjoy experimenting with different "sound" is by switching up the amps. Just trying to solicit some opinions, of which I know there are many strong ones here at A-Gon. Thanks in advance!