When to go solid state vs. vacuum?

People paring 3 watt single ended tube amps with 84db 2 ohm speakers to listen to Mahler or Norwegian Death Metal are not to be allowed out if the house without supervision. I'm sticking to what I said...especially the part about "very inefficient" (that means LOW SENSITIVITY) being pretty much the major thing you need to be concerned about with tube amp/speaker matching in most cases. That sentence had at least 2 wimpy qualifiers so I'm safe. Using my carefully thought out and scientifically absolutely accurate and appropriate guidelines gleaned from years of madly stumbling around, you are limited to exactly 126,462 speaker designs that will sound great with any reasonably designed tube amp. Don't let techno geeks keep you from trying things...tube amps are fun (involving...both musically, and by forcing user maintenance "tube swap freak" characteristics out of you...you and your tube amp are IN IT TOGETHER), don't have to be expensive, and when your friends see a tube amp in your house they will think you're cooler than you actually are.

Speaker matching? Who can do THAT these days? Unless the speakers are very inefficient or designed by idiots they should work, although tone preference is personal. You can buy a factory upgraded 60wpc Jolida for half the cost of a Primaluna, and the "EZ bias" is simple, accurate (I check this with a meter because I like burning my fingers), and makes a case for NOT having auto-bias (whatEVER). I stuck KT120s in mine with no issues at all. So for a little over a grand you get an amp that has 4 and 8 ohm taps, accepts XLR and RCA inputs, and kicks ass. If you need more juice you can run 2 of 'em in mono for double the power and turn off the heat in the listening room...maybe even use the extra BTUs for warming food or small smelting projects. Get a REL for bass...do all of this now and report back immediately. Go...get out of here...

After reading the otherwise ignored "measurements" part of a review of my speakers, I switched to the 4 ohm tap on my Jolida amp and I think it sounds better. I do use a snowblower...have to get that thing serviced.