Amp for Vandy 3A?

I second the McCormack for SS, hard to beat at the price and with the Vandersteens. Your best advice regarding your speakers will be from Richard Vandersteen. He will get on the phone and he is a straight shooter.

I run my 3A Sigs with Cary 211 AE monoblocks (70 w/ch in class A 8 ohms, 110 in class A2). My room is small but I never get even close to running out of power. I listen to large scale orchestral music (but not rock). The 211's have a lot of iron and a good power supply so those 70 watts are real. In general, I find that you need about double solid state watts to achieve the same subjective listening power from a good tube amp. In my case, that would equate to ~140 watts solid state (a loose rule of thumb to me).

I run 3A Signatures with a Pass Aleph 4, which is 100 class A watts into 4 or 8 ohms. The Vandies are rated as a 6 ohm speaker. My room is 22 x 12 x 8 with adjoining spaces which are open to the listening area. There is no problem with compression, clipping etc. I don't listen to much rock but a lot of jazz. Although I don't listen at deafening levels, I do like to crank it a fair amount. I live in an apartment, so that probably limits me somewhat.

I have heard the DNA 1.0 and 0.5 and while good amps for the money, in my opinion, are not in the class of the Pass Aleph series. Either DNA may give out before the Pass ever will, due to the design of the Pass. Pass Aleph 4's, while not often seen on Audiogon used, are an excellent bargain (relatively cheap) and is an amp that you can keep for life.

The most obvious choice is Audio Research, it has historically been Richard Vandersteen's brand of choice.

My brother has the 3A Sigs and uses an AR 100.2/LS16 preamp and loves it. Perhaps a little more power reserve like the 150.2 or 300.2 might be better.

I'm using the Modwright SWLP into Channel Islqnds D200's and love that combination into my 3 sigs. I used to use a McCormack 1 RevA but the CI's were a revelation in clarity and resolution. The Vandies tend a bit to the warm side but with these and the outstanding Modwright, these speakers really shine, IMO.