What kind of power wakes up electrostatic speakers

Hi,
Try to find some Counterpoint power amps. Unfortunately, they are no longer in production so you might have some trouble locating them but it is worth it.
I have two Counterpoint NPS400's (recently upgraded by Mike Elliott, the designer-- he can be reached at altavistaaudio.com) and they sound great. In my experience, bi-amping electrostatic speakers is really the way to go, because they are notoriously inefficient. High capacity power amps really help the speakers to perform to their full potential.

Bear is right, its current.

I'll probably get some flack here, but driving Quad 989's the Innersound amp sounded , well, brittle - kinda like a Coda amp, who I think makes it for Sanders...

I've seen the Berning ZH270 easily drive a pair of Acoustat 1+1 Medallion transformer elctroststat spkrs - a very tough load. My advice is get the Berning. No big tube hassles either, run warmish not hot, don't weigh much, great reliability - what do you need to know?

If not, and you like SS, the Sim suggestion above looks good.

Respectfully disagree, but no flack. The InnerSound seems to need major break-in. Now usually I'm a little skeptical of all this break-in bidness, but, I personally experienced a break through with the InnerSound after a minimum of about a hundred hours, plus, you need to drive the s**t out of it to get the goodness. Warmer is better. Soon I will carry by InnerSound over to a SoundLab UL-1 owner and we will compare it to some Boulder mono-blocks. Could be interesting.

Try tube amps. The previous owner of my Acoustats commented that his Acoustat seemed more at ease with tube amp of decent size and power. I've tried my Acoustat Model 3 with an Audio Alchemy OM-150 (150wpc) and an Acurus A150 2 stereo amp. The 'stats were more at ease with the OM-150, since it was quite a buiser. I tried my Quicksilver silver mono 90's, and even thought I had less power (some 90wpc), that 'stats were driven with even more ease. No sure if it's the volts, current, or the fact the tubes can just deal with load the 'stats present (better overloading?). I think this helps drive home the point of Jim Strickland's direct drive tube amps.

I you're looking for a big tube amp, try the Wolcott. It was designed for drive ESLs, in particular the Soundlab models.

I have owned stats for 14 years now, Beveridge and Martin Logan. I have made the switch over to tubes and am currently running a Decware Integrated SET @ 7W. Yes, 7W! Gets much louder than it has any right to, not to mention sounding infinately more engaging than the 150W SS amp it replaced. One factor to keep in mind is that most tube amps (Deware is a notable exception) like to drive higher impedance speakers.

Good luck, Paul