Tubes with Thiel CS-3.6's? has anyone had success?

I use a pair of Wright-Sound WPA3.5 (2A3) amps with my 3.6's. No problem filling up my room, and no problem at all with the sound quality. I listen mainly to classical (string quartets, small scale orchestral, and jazz).

But - I have a CAT preamp (high gain) which does make a difference over conventional gain preamps. My room is about the same size as yours, has carpeted floors and drapes. So a 50 watt amp shouldn't be a problem.

Zaikesman: I am not having anyone on... I would never do that, especially here. I purchased the 2A3 amps to use with my DIY single-driver speakers I'm building. In the meantime, I hooked them up to my Thiels - yes, they do make more than enough SPL levels for classical/jazz for my ears in my room. But, the CAT preamp has a signal gain of 24 db which goes a long way in making them work the way they do for me. Granted, they cannot handle orchestras, rock, choral, pipe organs, etc., but string quartets and the such come through loud and clear. Heck, even symphonies are handled for the most part satisfactorily. I'll dust off my Radio Shack sound level meter and post back what I get at my normal listening levels.

My mainstay amps that I currently use with the Thiels are a pair of Mark Levinson 20.6 monoblocks (100W ea). I'm not saying that all SET's work for everybody's setup the same, but don't outright dismiss low power, high dynamic headroom SET's with 86 db/2.83V/4 ohm speakers - especially that most listening levels in a lot of living rooms are produced by far less power than one would think. But if you're tastes lean towards shaking the walls... and, to recall, this thread stated that "... volumes are kept very low..."

If anyone's still interested, playing a Rudolph Serkin Beethoven piano sonata CD, the average SPL at the listening position (9 feet away, 13ft x 25ft x 9ft room) with the preamp pot at 12'oclock (50%) was 65 db with 71 db peak ("C" weighted scale, fast response). Not bad for a wimpy 2A3 with the Thiel 3.6.