Best Balanced Tube Amp To Pair With Meridian G02?

Thanks to everyone for all of your thoughts thus far.

Al said "I could not find an impedance curve for the 17.5's, but if you or someone else could locate and provide a link to one I think it would definitely help to focus the recommendations you will receive."

I also could not find an impedance curve for the 17.5's but the specs are as follows:

Silverline 17.5

Specifications
Design (Bass Reflex): 2 way
Drivers: (carefully made for Silverline by Dynaudio*)
One Dynaudio Esotec D260 1.25" soft dome tweeter
One Dynaudio Esotec 17WLQ vented double magnet
long throw 7" mid/woofer
Frequency Response: 32 - 32,000 Hz
Sensitivity (2.8V/1m): 90 dB/1W/1m
Max. Transient Output: 127 dB
Nominal Impedance: 8 ohms
Crossover Frequency: 3,000 Hz
Recommended Power: 15 - 300 WRMS
Dimension (H x W x D): 14" x 8'5" x 15"
Shipping Weight: 90 lbs.(pair)
Speaker Connections: Bi-wire

I'm now leaning towards an Atma-Sphere S-30 as perhaps my best choice. However, this choice may be problematic.

What finally sold me was a lot of additional research and uncovering something I had never known, and which is very unique. According to what I've read, all of the Atma-Sphere power amps have equivalent sound quality (assuming they are the current version, or upgraded to it) the difference is simply in power. Having heard some of their top amps, granted it was a few years back, that has me convinced this is the right way to go.

As for why the S-30 specifically? , Well, the M60's would drive my very small listening to temperatures that would make it impossible to use them almost half the year. Trust me, I had a friend who owned those in Chicago, and his room was larger than mine and still became very hot during extended listening sessions and were unusable in the summer.

And now to the problematic aspect of this. I don't know how many S-30's have been sold, but my guess is that it is not a terribly large number. I base that on the fact that they show up for sale so seldom here on Audiogon. Of course, their owners may be so happy that no one ever sells one? Honestly,though, I don't recall ever seeing more than one or two of these appearing for sale here in an average year. You see far more M60's and MA-1's, etc. And to complicate matters further, I would only want one of the older style Mk II's that are long, front to back, as opposed to the newer wide style models (I just really don't care for the appearance of the newer models). I would then send the unit off to Atma-Sphere to be upgraded to 3.1, all of which my budget can accomodate.

And to top it all off, last week, just moments before I was considering purchasing it and just risking that it would work well with my preamp (which Ralph has answered), someone closed a deal to buy one in mint condition for a very good price here on Audiogon.

So, in the end, please keep any recommendations or advice coming. While I can get by for say, a few months, I cannot honestly wait six months, or even a year for another S-30 MKII in great condition to pop up for sale, and may be forced to go in a different direction simply due to that reason. Things are never simple in the audio world.

Nightfall, there is another alternative. Its possible to operate our amps with less than the full complement of power tubes. So if you have a set of M-60s, you could run them with 4 or 6 power tubes instead of 8.

The M-60 was also made in the long chassis. It was known as the M-60 MkII.3.

Ralph, I had seen a similar comment in an ad listing that your amps do not require all of the tubes to be installed to operate. Is there a minimum number of tubes, ie. half or something like that which is required? Is this true of all tube amps (for the power tubes at least)?

I would love to own one of your amps, sound fantastic but I always think to myself, how much does it cost to replace all those tubes? Which may say just as much about my ability to afford one of your beautiful sounding amps.

Ckoffend, you can usually run the amp with half the power tubes. Its a good idea to derate one of the power fuses but that is easy- just change the fuse. This is not something you can do with any tube amp BTW.

The tubes are inexpensive since they do not require matching.