Lamm ML2 Vs Tenor 75

Henry.. OTL's are directly conneted to your speaker. Thats why there is a greater chance for a "blow-out".
There are probably some safety measures in the amp or possibly some you cn add before your speakers.. but they will compromise the sonics.
I heard both amps you are looking at.
IMHO, you should look at the BAT VK-75SE. It's alot less $$$ with almost all the goodness.
Its not quite as fast as the Tenor, but its very close.. with lots of air. The Lamm has that SET magic, but is harder to match up to speakers.
Good luck,
Mike

To clairify my last statement about OTL's. The tube is directly connected to the speakers. So if a tube shorts, it can send lots of current to the speakers.
A transformer based amp, isolates this current along with other saftey features.
mike

Henry,
You are "hoping to get a lot more air and immediacy". The Kharmas are known for not having an over-abundance of air on top, and neitehr does the Lamm (though to a lesser extent). So you will have to 'work' to get as much air as this combination is capable of. When you say that you also want to increase 'immediacy', this may indicate that there may be something else in your system that is suboptimal, sucking away some of the performance that is possible with your amp/speaker combination. Have you tried various vibration isloation techniques with the ML2? Even though Vladimir designs the amps with specific attention to isloating the parts from mechanical vibration - they still benefit from further attention to this tube-component's curse.

As far as the Tenor/Kharma combination is concerned, Tireguy is correct in that this is certainly a very synergistic combination - on par with the Lamm/Kharma combination - but with a different 'flavor'. One of the immediately obvious differences is in the dynamics, both micro and macro: whereas the Lamm, correctly isolated, renders all of the dynamics in a flowing, almost joyous manner, the Tenors render them in an eager and youthful, exciting manner. I am not familiar enough with the Tenors to say how they wear over time with respect to their innate musicality and naturalness - but people I respect have been very, very happy with them. I have also never heard of a Tenor damaging a speaker, and having talked to the people at Tenor who are very competent and detail oriented engineers, I think you can go back to worrying about lightning strikes and rogue vacuum cleaners and those other, numerous, more common audiophile hazards... :-)

Best,
Mike (Lamm dealer)

Heard both the Tenor/3.2 and Lamm ML2/3.2 as well as the the ML2's on the Kharma Exquisites. The ML2's are by far the best of the Lamm amps, and by a wide margin. I owned the Tenor/3.2 combo, which I preferred to the ML2/3.2 combo. Both are very good, the differences I heard as follows:
Tenors are more dynamic, extended in the highs, transparent and open and have a more realistic bass. Better attack of notes, and a "you area there" sense. I found the soundstage, width and particularly depth more reasistic with the Tenors. Overall I found the Tenors more lifelike, to the extent that the Lamms sound somewhat polite and anemic by comparison.

Well, as a person who ultimately familiar with both amplifiers I sincerely suggest you to look in the Tenor direction. Compare to the Tenor Lamm’s SET has two major disadvantages that really put Lamms out of the game:

1) Absent on the contemporary market a loudspeaker that would qualify to be driver by ML2 and that would be able to utilize even on 50% the ML2’s capacities. Trust me, when people drive their fanny 89-95 dB sensitive speakers with ML2 they just satisfier their egomania to own $30K amplifier and as a result, they do not take advantage what ML2 is capable to offers.
2) Absent among the majority of the “people doing audio” the individuals who were capable to form a noble enough demands in audio and, as a result, their incapacity to discriminate audio result. Pay attention, you are asking this question at the forum that has a Musical section. Go there, read the context of the posts and you will have a clear picture about the “individuals” and “thinking” you deal around. If you find that what you read there stimulates you then defiantly go for the Tenor.

I hope this will help,
Romy the Cat