Quicksilver Silver 90 monoblocks

[RuralTom]

Great amps, just find that I prefer small watts with my horns.  Would consider trades (high eff. speakers?), but cash is king.  $1200 for regular known VHF folks.

Pics can be found here:

http://pittsburgh.craigslist.org/ele/4918774650.html

[RnR]

Super cool, what sonic difference did you find between between big vs small watts with your horns?

[RuralTom]

Super cool, what sonic difference did you find between between big vs small watts with your horns?

Mainly in dynamics and in a je ne sais quoi / 'musical' quality sort of way, not to say it isn't a good sounding amp,  Night and day when I switched between the two on my CWs.  If I had power hungry speakers, I'd keep 'em... They sounded good with the Van Ls.

[Sir Thrift-a-Lot]

I suspect it is less because of "big vs small" (more power is always a good thing), but rather SE vs PP.

[RuralTom]

The Dynaco that I run is a PP amp.  I was led to believe the dynamics had a lot to do with transformer size; massive in the Quicksilvers very rather smaller with the Dynaco.  'Why' really doesn't matter too much, for my applications I simply prefer the sound one over the other.

[Meles]

The Dynaco that I run is a PP amp.  I was led to believe the dynamics had a lot to do with transformer size; massive in the Quicksilvers very rather smaller with the Dynaco.  'Why' really doesn't matter too much, for my applications I simply prefer the sound one over the other.

I had the ST35 briefly and a friend still has the unit in mothballs. I thought it was a great amp given its affordable long lasting EL84 output tubes. I also have an Eico integrated with 7591 outputs which is darn nice as a 7591 is supposed to be like a half of a Tungsol 6550. I am rather ignorant of the possibilities for these, but I would think adding triode mode to these would give them a sound much more like the revered directly heated triode amps.

I am really interested in the VTL Tiny Triodes which ran 4 EL84 per monoblock in triode mode for a supposed 25 watts. These would be great amps and have a strong reputation. Salvatore at Supreme Recordings recommends them. http://www.high-endaudio.com/RC-Amplifiers.html

Also on this page is a reference to "Tom Evans Linear A stereo amp; 25wpc from 4 parallel EL84s per channel driven by op amps (!),  .... a revolutionary amplifier."

A fun little tube the EL84.

Quicksilvers are supposed to be easy to modify with their point to point wiring.

A friend of mine runs some custom 6550 push pulls in triode mode on his quads and they can get amazingly loud in his room with only 25 watts.