Getting into Tube Equipment

Awesome, all good information.

Jond, I am only into vinyl. My current amp is nothing special, I have a Dayton Audio APA150.

My impression of the old Dynaco stuff was the appeal was in those wanting to modify them. Back when they could be had for a song. 

Not a bad place to start, but for just sound quality, it's easy to do better...the list of tube amps in all price ranges is too big to comprehend.

Is there local stereo shops you could visit, buy from? Sometimes...MOST of the time, in person is the best way to go. You get to hear it, likely try it out at home. MUCH much easier to decide what you like that way. 

It's as much a discoverey as it is a matter of research, the more of an open mind you have, the more possibilities.

I’d recommend giving us more information about what aspects of sound reproduction are most important to you. Knowing what type of music you listen to is really just one small part of the puzzle.

That said, and taking a stab in the dark, it’s hard not to recommend the Rogue Cronus Magnum ll in your situation especially if you prefer buying new. 100wpc should be enough for your speakers, and it even comes with a MM phono pre if you happen to use that cartridge type. Frankly, I’d upgrade to a separate phono stage, and given the excellent reviews of his SP14 preamp I’d be very tempted to audition Don Sachs’ custom tubed phono stage at $995. Combined you’d be at $3600 for all new equipment.

Used you have tons of options as well. There’s a Vitus SS-010 integrated for $5000 (MSRP $13,000), and pairing that with the Sachs phono pre would have you at $6000 total, and I’d wager there’d be few people who’d not like that combo. The Vitus puts out only 25wpc, but they’re high quality Class-A watts and likely more than capable of driving your Dentons as loud as you like. Other nice integrateds are Hegel H300 or Plinius Hautonga among many others. Anyway, best of luck.

@captainblackleg, an earlier post recommended Revel speakers. If you want to keep this on a budget, I would pass on that recommendation, that is if you plan to use a tube amp with only 35 watts per channel!
The interface between the amp(s) and speakers is really important! You’ve not mentioned the size of your room or how lively it is and that plays a role too. For example if in a smaller room you might be able to use a speaker with less efficiency. In a larger room, higher efficiency speakers can really help!

So let’s assume that a 60 watt amp is all you can afford? In that case I would be hesitant to go with any speaker that is less than about 92 db. Now here’s the tricky bit- when dealing with tubes, speaker *efficiency* is more important than speaker *sensitivity*.
The reason is that the former is rated 1 watt at 1 meter, the latter is 2.83 volts at one meter. Before your eyes glaze over, the reason this is important is because if you have the bad luck to wind up with a 4 ohm speaker (which is usually bad for tubes unless the speaker is really really efficient, and by that I mean over 99 db), the 4 ohm speaker will be harder to drive than the specs seem to suggest!
There’s a little math involved, at 8 ohms the two specs are the same. But change the impedance to 4 ohms and the sensitivity spec will be 3 db higher than the actual efficiency of the speaker! So if you have a speaker that is 4 ohms and the sensitivity is rated at 92db, the actual efficiency is only 89db. That 3 db may not seem like a lot, but requires that you double the amplifier power to play at the same level than if the speaker were 8 ohms with the same sensitivity.
So if your amplifier dollar is on a budget, the higher sensitivities of 4 ohm speakers might be a siren song, but if your wits are not about you, it can lead to money flushed down the loo.

Also, all tube amps sound better on 8 ohm loads than they do on 4 ohms, because the output transformer is more efficient, so the amp can make a slight bit more power, have up to an octave lower bandwidth, and lower distortion. This gets even better with 16 ohms BTW and on 16 ohms, speaker cables get a lot less critical...
There is no reason you have to suffer less resolution because the speaker is higher efficiency. In this regard, there really isn’t a tradeoff until you get into speakers with a horn loaded bass array, which trade efficiency off for bass response (unless the horn is enormous).

With many tube amplifier companies, the smaller amps are often the ones that sound the best because they have more bandwidth. This is particularly true of Single Ended Triode (SET) amplifiers. The exception is OTL amplifiers which have no output transformer; this being because the output transformer in nearly all tube amps is the bandwidth limitation.

Some speaker recommendations: DeVore Fidelity, ZU Audio, Audiokinesis, Coincident Technology, Merlin (used only), Pure Audio Project, some of the Tekton lineup (stay away from the 4 ohm models); there are many more.

Here’s a tip: pay attention to the bass array in the speaker. If rated at 8 ohms but you see dual woofers, it may well be that the speaker is actually 4 ohms in the bass while ’nominally’ rated at 8 ohms! The B&W 802 is an example of this. A speaker like that might have you thinking that tube amps can’t play bass, and they totally can. So check with the manufacturer to make sure that the woofer array (if more than one driver) has an impedance of at least 8 ohms (16 ohms is better- the amplifier distortion goes down and the output transformer gets even more efficient) and overall the speaker efficiency is at least 92 db and you won’t go wrong unless your room is really big. If so, you’ll have to consider a more efficient speaker like a Klipsch (some of which are quite good with tubes).

One more thing- if you’re considering an SET (which can be really musical), obey this rule of thumb: match the amp to a speaker whose efficiency is such that the amp isn’t really going to make more than about 20% of full power. This is important as SETs are nearly 10% distortion at full power and the distortion starts to take off right at about 20% of full power. At that point the amp starts to sound really ’dynamic’ because distortion product (composed of harmonics that coincidentally the ear uses to sense sound pressure) starts to show up on the leading edges of the musical transients. IOW, the ’dynamic’ quality is just distortion interacting with physiology. Once you know that is the case, its not as interesting to hear that type of ’dynamics’. OTOH, SETs have a property of extremely **low** distortion if the amplifier power is diminished towards zero, and for this reason if you really want to hear what they do, you need a speaker than is more efficient than you will find others recommending, even on this site and possibly later on this thread! But don’t be fooled, and your amplifier dollar will be a lot better served.
Good Luck!

^^^^ Words of wisdom derived from experience, as always.