Thoughts on the best bang for the buck

i agree with the 3.5 great amp and plenty of power for the maggie

I would also go for a second hand Musical Fidelity, either A3.5 or the 150w/ch A300.

I have been wondering about the Decco amp as well. I have just purchased a pair of Vandersteen 1C's and am looking to replace an old Onkyo amp. This is a secondary system that will have a Squeezebox attached to it.
Someone suggested a little NAD integrated amp - those of you who are familiar with DECCO - would this be a good match for the Vandys? I do like the idea of a built in DAC as mine is a very old Theta.....

I don't know if it has enough power for the MG 12's but I've been very happy with the Decco I bought. It replaced some more expensive gear in an attempt to simplify things and the combination of sound quality and versatility are really impressive for the price.

I used it by itself during warm weather but am using it now as a DAC and preamp to drive a separate tube amplifier. The DAC is connected to both a DVD used as a transport and an Airport Express for streaming audio. I upgraded the single tube in the preamp section to a NOS Tesla 6922 and that made a slight but noticeable improvement.

I've owned integrateds from NAD, Rotel, Cambridge and Audio Refinement and I'll take the Decco over any of them. The build quality isn't as good as the much more expensive gear the Decco replaced but is comparable to the NAD and Cambridge gear. The DAC in it isn't quite as precise as the Benchmark it replaced but it's close enough and the price is amazing for what you get.

BAsed on what sfar said, it looks like the Decco or perhaps eve Nova as pre-amp outputs that enable it to be used with a separate power amp. That would excellent!

You could start with Decco or Nova and then upgrade with a separate high power power amp later if needed.

In this scenario, I could easily also recommend the Musical Fidelity A3CR I use in my system or other MF power amp equivalent as the amp upgrade if needed.